Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf
by interesting2125
Summary: Nyx and Leliana have written a legend of their own. But the Warden and her bard soon realize that every action causes ripples; for the Binding is unraveling, and the Dread Wolf rises... Sequel to Pawn of the Wolf, post-Blight, F!Surana/Leliana
1. Chapter 1

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Prologue: **

**Dead trees**

* * *

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware (Even Fen'Harel!) - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx. I am having fun writing this.

This is the sequel to my first story, Pawn of the Wolf. Current events will make a bit more sense if you are familiar with the initial storyline.

BTW, This story may very well include every kind of darker stuff, from non-explicit rape refs to (maybe possibly) more, ahem, explicit smut, plus a generous helping of demonic rituals, torture, death and varied dismemberment. Yeah, so that's just Dragon Age without the granny underwear.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

"Magic exists to serve Man, and never to rule over him."

Apprentice Gian Torrese stepped confidently within the circle of Templars, noticing the solemn expressions, the naked blades held in the warrior-monks' hands. Ethellion, Antiva's First Enchanter, smiled warmly and motioned for him to touch the cup of roiling, liquid metal that was his gateway to the Fade, to Enchanter status, and maybe, if he played his cards right, to a decent life as a healer. Gian had a knack for healing magic, he genuinely loved helping people, and Antiva City being a hotbed of disease, not to mention the sporadic fits of Crow activity, healers were in short supply.

_My Harrowing, _he thought as he slowly emerged into the Fade's hazy, aberrant geometry.

_My ticket to a better life. My chance to prove myself. _

He immediately felt nauseous. He was floating –or _falling_? - amidst a yellowish haze, from which short-lived structures - some tiny, some gigantic - emerged, swirled before his eyes, and dissolved into nothingness. It was very disorienting, and he understood that his first test was to impose a semblance of order onto this ever-changing environment; not for stability's stake, but in order to keep his own sanity. Closing his eyes for a moment, he chose to concentrate on his mother's image, small and hazy from the years of separation. When he opened his eyes, the shifting geometry of the Fade had somewhat stabilized.

He stood on top of a hill of sorts, the ground brownish and covered in small, strangely organic-looking alveoli that crumbled under his foot, only to mysteriously recombine seconds later. Absurd vegetation, vaguely akin to giant carrots, surrounded him, humming softly; the singing roots were densely packed in every direction, save for a straight, narrow path that led down the gentle slope. At least directions were pretty clear-cut, he reflected with a little wry smile.

He remembered Ethellion's aged, yet oddly musical Elven voice as he prepared him for the ordeal.

"You will face a demon; whether you emerge from the Fade as a mage or an abomination is entirely up to your skills, ethics, and judgment."

_All right then, demon it is_, he thought as he started the long, slow descent along the winding path. He felt confident in his abilities; in fact, it was a well-know fact that only a small proportion of apprentices admitted to the Harrowing failed. The key here was probably to avoid thinking of the consequences of failure. But Maker, what a _dark_ place the Fade was! Gian had read many descriptions of the ethereal realms, some lyrical, some obviously written by stern, unimaginative people; all had mentioned mists, shifting landscape and hazy light, but not the dull, pervasive obscurity that seemed to deepen the further he walked down the trail.

He stopped for a while, trying to evaluate his progress. The path ahead of him disappeared in inky blackness after a dozen feet; he could hardly see his feet. Turning his gaze uphill, Gian realized with a little shiver that the obscurity was even deeper there, as though the darkness had crept around him as he walked and was now cutting him off his only escape route.

And maybe it _had_, he reflected. The whole point of the Harrowing was to send him into a demon's jaws, so to speak, and to see if he managed to escape with his soul intact. He smirked. So what, this particular demon liked to create the illusion of night? It was not as though Gian was still a kid, clutching to his mama's hand and begging for her to keep the candle lit as she kissed him good night.

"_Bene_, demon, you want me to walk in the dark, yes? I am coming, baby!" He shouted to the creeping darkness.

He instantly regretted his outburst. While the obscurity stayed the same, still and thick, he could have sworn that he heard, or felt or smelled –perception in these realms was a very relative thing – _something_ stir in response to his shout, not too close, but not nearly far enough. Something that had merely been there before, but was now acutely aware of his presence.

Well, it was done anyway, no need to brood over it overmuch. _Quello che sara, sara_, and soon, too.

He resumed his walk down into total darkness, keeping to the right side of the path, his hand brushing lightly against the dry, oddly cold bark of the carrots, trees, whatever they were; although if he'd had to guess, he would have said what he touched now was indeed the bark of very old, dead trees… Or maybe the shriveled skin of very old corpses; there certainly was a whiff to this place. He scoffed at the outlandish notion. The Fade was not planted with corpses… Right?

Something behind him, the faintest hint of a hot, wet breath on his neck, and he jumped with a loud curse, lightning crackling between his hands in blinding blue light; the darkness shrunk at his display of power, hurrying to hide behind the gnarled corpses of – _Thank you Maker you are my light and my hope_ – very old, decrepit trees, their bark grayish, sickly-looking.

He was alone on the dark trail.

Gian reluctantly let the light die between his fingers, cursing himself for not memorizing one of the simpler Creation spells that would have allowed him to create more permanent illumination.

The breath came back, of course. Every time it did, Gian spent more of his power to send lightning crackling far along the obscure path, though he never saw anything but the shadows of the dead trees, dancing merrily in the blue light. Gian had no idea how long the game lasted, mere minutes or days of rising terror, but in the end he turned to summon lightning and nothing happened; he stood trembling on the dark path, his forces spent, his dreams of freedom melting away.

The breath hit his face, hideously close, dry now and searing, carrying the stench of unnamed killing fields.

With an inarticulate scream Gian turned and ran, scrambling along the smooth, straight path like a madman, the breath sticking to him, following in smooth, silent strides.

And so in the end Gian found his demon.

He saw the light ahead, like a tiny eye at first; he dashed madly, laughing and crying as he ran. The tiny eye grew into a small window, a bright doorway; a moon-drenched clearing amongst the dead trees, the light harsh and cold on him as he stumbled into the empty space. He turned to the dark path and stood for a long time, breathless, fists clenched, waiting for the thing, whatever it was, to emerge and rip him to shreds, but nothing came.

Something moved feebly at his feet, and he saw the demon at last. She must have been beautiful once, all smooth, bluish skin, exaggerated feminine curves and slithering tail. No more. Now she was empty, a hollowed carcass that was not even allowed to die. Something moved in the gaping wounds with a cold, metallic glint.

The moonlight shifting, Gian's shadow now split in twin copies, and he felt the breath again, not only on his neck, but singing him from head to toe. He fell to his knees by the butchered demon, shaking violently, eyes tightly shut.

_I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade;  
For there is no darkness, nor death either, in the Maker's…_

Gian never got to the third stanza. With a deafening rumble that may well have been laughter, the Dread God's maw snapped shut.

After an eternity or a moment, something fell onto the Fade's bizarre ground. Small, round and glistening, its silver shell protecting what was left of Gian's soul.

A seed.

* * *

First Enchanter Ethellion averts his gaze, resisting the urge to press his hands on his pointed ears as Gian's body writhes in the Templars' grasp, letting out screams the likes of which he prays the Maker he will never hear again. A flash of the blade, and the Tower can mourn one of its sons.

* * *

His titanic shadow roams the fringes of the Grey Forest, His domain, His prison. He hunts now, demons, dreamers, lost mages. He feasts upon the souls of the living, and under His restless gaze, dead trees arise.

The Grey Forest shall grow.

* * *

_Chant verses from DA Wiki as always…_


	2. Chapter 2: Hot water

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Hot water**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx. I am having fun writing this.

Many thanks to all who have already put this story on fave/ alert while we were just at the prologue stage.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

_When you have cheated death countless times, surviving war, treason and torture; when you have been shot through your spine, fallen to the very brink of death, and been brought back from the abyss by your one, true love; only to have her disappear without an adieu, leaving you stranded in an alien land singed by the fires of war…What will be left in you?_

_Not much. A song, perhaps. And, if you are one of the true survivors, a tiny flame, hope so intense that nothing will extinguish it._

A stately suit in Denerim's royal palace, the wood-paneled walls and elegant furniture mostly unscathed by the recent darkspawn invasion; the bed was undone, and a great hound slept by the door. A soft, splashing sound, the dog's ears shifting slightly to follow the sound, and then a clear voice drifting in, the whimsical tune carried on a small cloud of fragrant steam.

Leliana closed her eyes and reclined in the huge wooden tub, the steaming water almost too hot, her pale skin turning a bright pink. She didn't mind the heat; what she needed above all was to feel _clean_. Although the healers had washed her body while she slept, she could not shake the memory of the soiled cage in the chapel. Shuddering, she examined her upper arms, finding no trace of the bruises the creatures' grip must have left. Magical healing, she reflected, carried a curse in its blessing; it repaired the body without addressing the soul's wounds, and somewhat the disconnect hurt, too.

_Closure_, she murmured. The problem resided in closure, or the absence thereof. She had been granted no time for closure before her wounds were healed, leaving only the faint outlines of older, deeper scars. It was as though everything she had been through between her escape from Orlais and her waking up in silken sheets in Denerim had been but a dream; nothing but the fancies of a broken mind.

And perhaps it was. Perhaps Leliana was still lying in the Admiralty's dungeon, raving in a world of her own while Marjolaine went about the delicate business of hastening her execution. Old pain crept through her body, the bones remembering every line of fracture; she suddenly felt old, used up, discarded. The clear stone walls of the bathroom seemed to close in on her, turning several shades darker, covering in grime, and for a second she was _there_ again. A little whimper escaped her lips and she ducked under the surface, eyes tightly shut against the heat. The liquid void filled with her faint, bubbling moan, and she modulated it, turning it into a sad song of sorts, a primary note that she could control. It took a long time for her lungs to empty thus, and when she had squeezed out the last of her breath, she forced herself to remain immobile; quiet at last, suspended in a safe, dark womb of water.

Leliana was smarter than people usually gave her credit for; at least those people who could not see beyond her simple beliefs and her passion for shoes. She understood all too well the conflicting impulses that now kept her hovering in the dark.

_Submission. _

Marjolaine, molding her into her image; a beautiful, utterly empty idol. Leliana had crawled at the master bard's feet and surrendered her self-esteem, her youthful illusions; _everything_. At her master's hands, Leliana had experienced pleasures unlike anything another man or woman could offer. She had reveled in becoming less than a person, a pretty instrument to be played by her master. Now that Marjolaine was gone, her exquisite bones rotting somewhere in an unmarked grave, Leliana could still surrender control. She could submit to the darkness; she only had to breathe it in.

_Freedom. _

Andraste was the quintessential rebel, defying the social and religious order of her time. Leliana saw now how giving herself to the Maker had been an act of defiance, an attempt at wrestling back control over her own life. And then her Warden came along...

Leliana smiled in the dark. Nyx never submitted, not to the Chantry, not to the Grey Wardens, and hardly ever to her. At first Nyx and Leliana argued over everything, almost daily, neither side willing to surrender; yet they slowly came together, to the realization that they were meant to be. Now the blasted elf was gone _again_, and Leliana had to decide whether she would submit to her choice. Her smile widened into an impish grin. To ask the question was to answer it.

Grasping the edge of the tub, Leliana pulled herself up, very slowly. Her face broke the surface smoothly and she took a deep, controlled breath, feeling life flow into her. She stayed immobile for a long time, cradled by warm, fragrant water; a lone rosebud ran aground in the shallow straits between her breasts.

Sleepiness sneaked in. She opened her eyes, dreamily, her gaze drifting on the high ceiling. Surprisingly enough, it was painted in Orlesian fashion, the bold colors and exquisitely rendered details standing in stark contrast to the simple, hieratic style of Fereldan native art. She recognized the scene instantly: pious knight Olivier refusing the advances of the Queen of Elves in the Arbor Wilds.

The tale, with its many clichés of promiscuous pagans and bigoted warriors, never was one of her favorite; but the artist's rendition was quite… personal. Olivier's display of averting his gaze from the lithe, naked figures of the Elf Queen and her suite did not quite mask his contented smile, or the _huge_ bulge in his breeches; the Queen's expression was as ironic as it was seductive. The pious warrior wanted to be seduced; the sensual pagans mocked his hypocrisy. Leliana felt a pang of homesickness. She saw the painting as emblematic of the Orlesian spirit, of its struggle to reconcile the exigencies of the spiritual with an inextinguishable appetite for life.

She wondered who the painting was originally made for; it was probably a vestige of the hundred-year occupation of Ferelden. The heat made her dreamy, and she let her mind wander freely, playing games of imagination. She imagined an Orlesian noblewoman, as homesick as she now felt, awaiting her lover in this very bathtub. The forgotten noblewoman must have let her eyes wander over the naked elves like she did now. Leliana wondered if _she_ knew how smooth elven skin really was; the indescribable, wild fragrance of dark, flowing hair.

Her gaze drifted to the figures in the background of the Queen's suite; a fair-haired, buxom human woman was held down by two elven maidens, the girls' smile hungry, the woman's lips parted in silent rapture; just like her own lips parted now, her hand trailing slowly along her stomach, hesitating for a second, then moving lower to answer the growing urge. She had forgotten the Orlesian noblewoman, or perhaps she was now intruding into her fantasy; for now Leliana was _in_ the painting, the lithe, fair-skinned maidens holding her down with mocking grins as she stroked herself; white teeth flashed, tiny pink tongues flicked on her skin. The Elf Queen turned to face her, silver eyes glistening over the slithering black lines of tattoos; small, perky breasts heaved in unison with the bard's hurried breath, and Leliana closed her eyes and moaned Nyx's name as she arched her back in blinding bliss.

* * *

_Andraste's fig!_

Nyx fell to her knees onto the deep carpet of the Common Library, the books she was carrying clattering loudly. A rush of sensations washed over her: warm water cradling her body; familiar, nimble fingers caressing her; naked elves holding her down… She saw _herself_ as she never had, beautiful and terrible, standing naked with hungry eyes. A string of inarticulate moans escaped her, and she heaved in the grasp of a violent, inexplicable and utterly _impossible_ orgasm.

"Are you all right, child?"

Senior Enchanter Sweeney's voice was… maybe concerned, as though he was speaking to a real person, in sharp contrast to many of the mages' treatment of the Tranquil. Nyx waited a few seconds for her breath to normalize before she answered.

"Yes, Senior Enchanter. I have suffered a momentary weakness. I will report to the Healers if the symptoms show up again." She spoke in her usual, low drone, with maybe a hint of huskiness.

"Perhaps you should do so now. It is quite uncommon for Tranquil to exhibit violent symptoms… Did you _feel_ pain?"

Nyx now understood that the expression on the man's ancient face was more curious than concerned. Reading faces was very difficult.

"I experienced no _pain_, Senior Enchanter. I believe the symptoms are gone now. I feel quite functional. However, I may require a change of smallclothes."

She saw his curious expression turn to mild disgust and a hint of embarrassment, and he dismissed her with a vague gesture of the hand. Had she still possessed a sense of humor, she may have found his reaction funny, coming from a man who was rumored to have survived the Circle massacre by hiding in a pile of garbage. As it were, her brain failed to process the association.

Nyx walked slowly to the Tranquil's dormitory, took off her robes, washed herself quickly– her nether regions were back to feeling as numb as a discarded sponge- and changed her underwear in the vast, open space. Privacy was not a Tranquil concern.

She held up her soaked underwear for a moment. There were two logical explanations: either Tranquil actually experienced sporadic fits of sexual activity –after all _that_ was hardly an emotion – or her symptoms had something to do with the Blood Ruby. It was quite possible that the Bond affected her and Leliana in more ways than expected.

In the absence of known historical precedent, Nyx decided that she would probably never know unless some new, unexpected event arose. Seeking outside advice would not do. While she literally _wanted_ nothing in her present state, Nyx remembered perfectly what her purposes and priorities had been prior to her transformation, and when given a choice, tended to act accordingly. Drawing attention to her blood bond with Leliana was not a sensible thing to do.

She walked back to the library, her eyes mechanically taking stock of the scars left by Uldred's disastrous rebellion; here and there, vast swathes of blackened stone reminded her of her own wrath, of a time when she was a being of power and anger. The Tower's corridors were very quiet, the former throngs of cackling magelings and grave enchanters all but decimated. The library itself had not been spared; several rows of brand-new oaken shelves waited to be filled by copies of the books held in Orlais and Antiva's Circles. Nyx remembered how upset she had been at seeing the books burn, even though she felt next to nothing for the fallen mages. She tried to calculate the amount of resources needed to train a mage, as compared to copying and transporting a book; a comparative death toll in terms of souls and paper. Coldly appraising her past reactions, she decided that she had been mistaken, but not by much.

Satisfied that she had thought over the subject thoroughly, she absorbed herself in work. She was in the process of re-classifying all surviving Spirit school tomes by author, a Herculean task for a single elf. She spent the rest of the afternoon moving heavy volumes across the vast expanses of the library. She did not keep a catalogue; whatever the Ritual did to her – and she only had the vaguest, fragmented memories of her ordeal- it appeared to have freed an enormous amount of brainpower, which could now be used for productive tasks, such as remembering the title, author and exact position of hundreds of books and scrolls. By the time the refectory's bell rang and she shuffled away to slurp her bland, nutritious porridge, she had all but forgotten the unexpected interlude.

Work: what a positive, satisfying activity.

* * *

There were over a dozen outfits in the wardrobe, most of them ugly and/or ill-fitting, but Leliana found a gem in the rough: an Antivan robe, black, wild silk with black pearl incrustations, a somewhat racy cleavage and matching shoes, trimmed with snakeskin. _Snakeskin_!

The news had come a few minutes earlier, Zevran escorting a young page, the kid obviously uneasy in the elf's company – she wondered if the Antivan's eclectic tastes extended to underage boys. Runt had snapped at the kid as he tried to hand her Anora's plain, white card inviting her to a simple collation in Kings' Hall. The page had made a less than glorified exit, and she felt a little guilty for giggling at his obvious terror. Zevran had given her the sort of long, hard look that usually meant business talk was needed, before bowing politely and offering to come back to escort her to the event.

Leliana was not familiar with Fereldan court etiquette, but she estimated that a "simple collation" would probably gather between thirty and a hundred guests. Not that it really mattered today; she would not be required to entertain, seduce or spy on anyone. Instead, she intended to take the opportunity to perfect her understanding of Fereldan society - and of course, to keep her ears open for any clues to Nyx's whereabouts.

A light rap at the door, and Zevran danced in, clad in loose, grey garments that accentuated his elegant figure. Leliana opened her mouth in greeting, and he silenced her with an overly theatrical gesture of the hand, eyeing her from head to toe with feigned reverence.

"And this", he finally purred, "This is exactly what the goddess of temptation looks like in my dreams."

"Liar", she replied, smiling at the absurdity of the compliment.

"Oh? How so, _bellissima_?"

"Just an inkling that your dreams probably don't include that much clothing… _beau gosse_."

"Ironic, really, that you should be always in my dreams, yet display such ignorance of them. But before we attend the Ice Queen of Ferelden, there are things we should discuss."

She looked at him intently.

"About her?"

Zevran nodded, a serious look replacing his flirty facade.

"Yes. First things first: She asked me to relay a message to you. She said that she left because she was dangerous, whatever that means; and also that she held her promise not to let you come to harm… Are you all right?"

Leliana nodded, biting her lip to stave off tears of relief; none of this was really news to her, merely a bittersweet confirmation of something she had suspected all along. And with the relief came new worries. Her Warden still loved her, maybe too much for her own good; the elf had gone away to do whatever she believed was necessary. _Can Nyx confront an elven god?_ Leliana doubted it, but she knew that it would not stop the sorceress from trying.

"I… will be all right, Zev. Just a little shaken."

"That is understandable. There is something else we need to discuss, though. A problem." The Antivan's manner turned businesslike. "It's about Nyx and her magic. Some survivors of the battle say that they saw her using blood magic, not only on darkspawn, but also on allies. More specifically, on a minor noble and on Loghain himself."

_Maker…_ Even as her heart sank, Leliana examined the information, weighed the implications, calculating, evaluating her options. Nyx didn't need a redheaded crybaby; she needed a bard. When Leliana spoke, it was with her old voice, musical, perfectly modulated, _lethal_.

"Question time, Zev". She shifted unconsciously, so that the light from the window accentuated her cleavage; arms coming together, a finger tracing lightly over the white flesh of her neck. "Are your sources reliable? Who are the witnesses? Has the Chantry been officially involved yet?"

She saw Zevran's nostrils widen very slightly to acknowledge desire, even as he smirked mischievously to let her know he was on to her game. The girl Leliana used to be would have fucked him gladly, for fun if not to show him who was in control. But she was a different person now. _Was she? She had certainly wasted no time in sentencing the witnesses to death. _The thought left a bitter taste in her mouth.

"My source is lovely, highly flexible, and quite reliable," Zevran answered with a zest of bravado. "The witnesses are three Redcliffe knights, survivors of the Warden's escort. To the best of my knowledge, the local clergy is too disorganized to mount a proper investigation… yet. So the answer to your _real_ question, bella, is _yes_. The conditions are quite favorable for a clean removal, should we feel the inclination to do so."

"Do _you_?"

"For the right price, yes." The elf's grin widened; they both knew that she would need his help. And _she_ knew that she would agree to anything.

"Name it."

"I want you to acknowledge, here and now, that _I_ am the better rogue. Also, I believe we must ask Anora for a boon in Nyx's name; how about we share five hundred sovereigns?"

Leliana laughed in relief. "You really are impossible, Zev. What have I done to deserve a friend like you, I wonder?"

"Not nearly enough, I am sure. But we will be working on this. Now say it, please?"

She grimaced. "All right… I hereby declare that you, Zevran Arainai, are the better rogue, spy and assassin. I bow to your boundless cunning and marvelous abilities. Are we done yet?"

"Almost", Zevran retorted with that insufferable, sunny smile of him. "If I remember well, you had… certain obligations, should you lose the bet."

"Zev… I was drunk off my feet when we made that bet…"

"No, no, no, dear, that will not do. You bet a kiss, and a kiss it shall be." The elf was positively beaming with glee. _Smooth bastard_… Leliana was glad for the distraction, though; anything to take her mind off the task ahead. For form's sake, she raised one final plea.

"But… I mean… _Oghren…_ Ugh…"

"Yes, well, I'd offer to substitute for you, but braided beards are just not my thing. And now, dear, shall we go and attend the Queen's little _festa_? I believe your hairy date is invited too."

* * *

Nyx burped contentedly, the onions served with today's porridge adding a stinging whiff to the process. She was quite content with the food: its nutritional content was adequate, and its lukewarm temperature staved off the risk of burns associated with feeling virtually no pain. She was always content with _everything_.

Of course the rations were human-sized; she would tell the cook next time. Wasting food was not a sensible thing. A shadow fell on the grayish remainder in her clay bowl, and she raised her gaze from the cooling oat sludge to stare at her vague, distorted reflection on white-lacquered – _carapace_- armor. She cocked her head to look at the Templar's face, but he was wearing his helmet, and only a flicker of brown eyes betrayed his humanity.

"Tranquil Nyx?" The voice was gruff, deformed by the steel helmet.

"Yes."

"Knight-Commander Greagoir wants you to pack your possessions and meet him in the entrance hall. Seems like you're going on a trip."

"Yes."

The clean-shaved man in front of her did not raise his eyes from his meal as she got up and left. None of the Tranquil did. Goodbyes were simply not productive.

She hurried to the dormitory and packed her things quickly and efficiently; Greagoir was even less patient now than he was before most of the Circle – and his own Templar garrison- was massacred under his command. There was not much to pack anyway: three sets of clean underwear, a spare brown robe, a little flask of elfroot unguent to take care of the frequent little wounds that came with numb extremities. She had to examine her hands daily to make sure no small cut or bruise became infected without her noticing.

The entrance hall. Months earlier, Nyx had enjoyed humiliating Greagoir before those massive metal doors. Now she stood listless as he handed some other steel-clad Templar a bunch of papers which, she guessed, reassigned her to another Circle. Irving stood by, clearly displeased, but said nothing as the unknown Templar examined the papers meticulously.

"Well I think everything is in order." The accent was much less musical than Leliana's, but unmistakable. Nyx examined the man more closely, but found nothing in the rugged, hawk-nosed features that reminded her of the bard. "Now about the Templar recruit?"

More papers, another display of bureaucratic earnestness, then the man nodded, satisfied that this transfer, too, was as regular as could be.

"Brother Cullen?"

One of the armored, helmeted figures next to Greagoir stepped forward and saluted. The Orlesian smiled warmly and extended a hand.

"Welcome to the Orlesian chapter, Brother."

"It is an honor, Brother." Cullen's voice was thick enough with emotion that even a Tranquil could read it. Nyx wondered if his reassignment was motivated by the ugly rumors she had overheard apprentices tell of him.

It turned out that it was, in a sense.

* * *

_A.N. Took some liberties with Tranquil sensory restrictions, mainly because I believe that a person with no "superior" emotions, but full sensory functionality ( food/ sex / sensitivity) would be closer to an instant-gratification-seeking machine than the docile robots depicted in the game. I'll probably take a lot more liberties with many things later, too…_


	3. Chapter 3: Light Bearers

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Light Bearers**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx. I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

A.N.: Sorry, only one update this week! I'm enjoying a short, sunny holiday and hopefully will come back with a head full of new ideas!

* * *

Andre de Montsimmard loved watching the sun set on Val Royaux. Seen from his private balcony in the Templars' headquarters, the imposing Redoute Castle, the imperial city was a rolling sea of red and ocher, the prevailing red tiles painted a lighter shade by the sun's last golden rays. In the distance, the Grand Cathedral's golden dome shone like the pure flame of faith it was meant to represent. Privately, Andre had always felt a little uneasy at the ostentation that pervaded the Chantry's cathedrals, in sharp contrast to Andraste's ways and to his own Templar education. But as he rose through the ranks of his order and got .?docid=18914092inted with Chantry politics, the impatient young man he once was had given way to a milder, almost tolerant man who understood the need for the clergy to keep the masses happy with displays of beauty. And the Cathedral _was_ beautiful, possibly the most beautiful thing ever built in a city where beauty lay at every corner.

The light receded from the dome and Andre smiled. Easily eclipsing the Cathedral's fleeting glory, the Maker's clouds shone above the city in changing spires of pure crimson. _So much for our hubris, he thought_.

Below him Val Royeaux was coming alive with lights, faithful to its nickname, the City that never sleeps. He remembered how he and his fellow recruits used to sneak into the city at night, before they took their vows, and partake in the city's revelry; although he did not regret consecrating his life to the Maker, he looked on those youthful memories fondly. How were Templars supposed to protect life, he wondered, if they had no knowledge of it? How could they protect the people, if they acted like secular lords, entrenched in their stone fortresses?

Andre grimaced. He knew that his views had earned him many enemies in the clergy, mainly amongst those who advocated more involvement of the Chantry in worldly affairs; incidentally, those were the lady-priests most likely to push for mandatory increase of Lyrium dosage and laxer recruitment policies. Well, unless the Divine herself commanded it, this would not happen. Grand Connetable Andre de Montsimmard, High Commander of the Templars of Orlais, was not only a man of principles; he also happened to be a relative of the Empress. That entitled him to a little impertinence from time to time. Of course, he was already old for a Templar. Soon enough, he reflected glumly as the crimson of the clouds slowly faded to dark blue, the Chantry's hawks would get more lyrium-addled Templars than they could shake a stick at; of that he entertained no doubt.

A firm rap came from inside his quarters, and he reluctantly left the balcony for the dark, elegantly furnished room. _Talk about the devil_… At this time of the night, the only person impertinent and annoying enough to bother the Grand Connetable in his quarters would be his second in command, and he did not relish the idea of seeing him. Not that Gilles was not a good officer of the Order; his record was all but exemplary, both as a mage slayer and a very effective commander. But he was… excessive. Excess of zeal in a Templar could be a frightening thing, and the reports of his squelching minor heresies on the fringes of the Empire were, quite frankly, disquieting.

At any rate, Orlesian and Chantry politics being what they were, the position of Grand Senechal had been given as an appeasement to the hardliners, and Andre now had to do with a zealot of a second-in-command, whose eyes promised fiery damnation every time he caught him having a glass of wine. Trials in the service of the Maker could take many forms indeed.

Andre reluctantly walked to the heavy, iron-studded door and let in the importune, not bothering with greetings when he saw that his guess was right. The man on the threshold bowed very deep, probably too deep to express actual respect. Andre threw him a disgusted look, taking in the tall, athletic shape, the short, strawberry-blond hair, the freckles, the regular features, the healthy complexion. Everything in this man was likable to the bone; except when he gave you one of those looks. The unblinking, icy stare belonged more on a reptile than on a man.

"My Lord Connetable. I beg you forgive my intrusion. Important news has reached us."

Andre groaned at the affectation of politeness. In his book Templars should address each other as brothers, except in formal settings. But the man just loved to throw the rules in his face at every occasion.

"Just speak then, _Brother_ _Gilles_," he snapped.

"Yes, _Lord Connetable_. Messages from Ferelden indicate that the rising Blight there has been terminated."

"Praise the Maker!" Andre exclaimed in delight; for once, Gilles had actually made his day. "So they had Grey Wardens in Ferelden after all? I thought they were all wiped out in that battle, where was that? Ostrogoth?" The Grand Connetable paced the room up and down in excitement; he could almost imagine the fire and fracas of the battle in a faraway land. _That_ was how he would like to end his life; not as a drooling idiot, struggling to remember his own name.

"I believe the name was _Ostagar_, My lord. But as to the final battle, local Templars report that it happened in Denerim, and that the city was mostly destroyed. In fact, rumor has it that at least part of the destruction was caused by the Grey Wardens themselves, possibly through the use of blood magic."

The mention of blood magic sobered Andre a little and he stopped pacing, rising a bushy, graying eyebrow.

"How substantiated are those rumors?"

"Not very substantiated, my Lord. No doubt we will receive reports from the local clergy when things return to normal in Ferelden."

"Right. Keep me informed, then." Not that there was much _he_ could do about a Grey Warden blood mage. The Wardens acted outside of Templar supervision, and normally kept to their business of fighting darkspawn.

Now if the Divine got involved…

Noticing that his second-in-command seemed to be waiting for his questions, he raised a gnarled, scarred hand. "Anything else you wanted to say?"

"Yes, Lord Connetable. We have captured a spy who tried to infiltrate the Redoute. The man claims to have information that he will only communicate to you." A pause, a cold smile creeping in; "Shall I have him tortured, my Lord?"

"Shall I have _you_ flogged, Senechal? Or shall I just remind you that the Inquisition's headquarters are further down the quays?" Andre could not believe that the man had the insolence to suggest Templars commit torture, with _his_ permission, in _his_ fortress. Did the Sword of Mercy mean nothing to the fucking whelp?

Gilles dutifully lowered his gaze.

"I apologize, my Lord Connetable. I merely considered this a merciful alternative to handling the man to the city guard." A pause. "What are your orders, my Lord?"

"Take me to that man. Now."

Gilles bowed, his expression inscrutable. "At your command, my Lord Connetable."

Andre fumed during the whole, rather lengthy walk from his lofty quarters to the deeply buried dungeons. Being in Gilles' company made him feel _dirty_. After the Senechal's little slip of the tongue – which _had_ to be intentional, given the cold-blooded nature of the beast- Andre could not help but reflect on the more exotic rumors behind the man's sinister reputation. An entire village burned to the ground because of some obscure fertility rites. Lyrium brands forced through mages' eye sockets. Mothers tortured into confessing their mage-born children's hideouts. It had all seemed outlandish and exaggerated when the Senechal first took his functions at the Redoute. Now… Andre was not so sure any more.

The Redoute's dungeons were a maze of musty, cobweb-riddled tunnels which saw little use, now that runaway mages were dealt with directly in every Chantry jurisdiction. At some point, Andre knew, the dozens of empty, dust-covered cells he passed by had been filled to the brim by one or the other of several, unsuccessful heresies. Little mention of this was to be found in official accounts; the Chantry's dirty laundry was more likely to be buried than aired in public. Andre believed the suppression of heresy was justified, to an extent; that unity of the faithful was paramount to confront the very real, very active forces of chaos and darkness. On the other hand, being the scion of an Orlesian noble family, it would have been difficult for him to ignore the glaring truth: that heresy was first and foremost a threat to established spiritual and temporal power, and that the motives behind its suppression were rarely as simple and pure as a young man's faith. _Perhaps_, he thought as he walked past a whole section of tunnel that was tiled from floor to ceiling with grimacing skulls, _perhaps I should retire, before the realities of politics finally break my faith_.

Gloomy thoughts, well assorted for the interminable maze of holding pens and prisons he was treading through. This confusedly reminded him of something; recently, his dreams had been very agitated, although he could never seem to remember anything when he woke, clenching his sheets and sweating profusely. Now, however, he felt an unsettling familiarity as the darkness receded reluctantly before the light of their torches, only to close behind him like a thick, wet curtain. _Stalking after him_. He suddenly felt dizzy and had to stop for a few seconds, peering into the dark recesses of the tunnel. Was something following them?

_Fangs in the dark._

The thought popped up uninvited, an absurd, sudden image that reminded him of whispered childhood tales. He shuddered and pulled nervously on the collar of his velvet robes.

Gilles turned around, a quizzical, almost amused look in his pale eyes.

"Excuse me, my Lord?"

"I…" Andre realized that he had spoken the words aloud. "I… Nothing, I just dreamt aloud. Probably the lyrium catching up to me, ha."

"Ah, yes. It happens."

_Well thanks a lot for the reassurance._ Andre was about to say something to that effect when they finally reached their goal, the light from multiple oil lamps almost blinding after the long walk in the dark. Andre's eyes soon accustomed to the light to reveal a large, square room, with walls that appeared freshly bleached and clean, polished blue tiling. Several chairs were arranged around a small table in a corner, while a whole wall was covered in bookshelves, the volumes on them sparkling new and free of dust. There was even a bed in the opposite corner, a simple, sturdy affair large enough for two. The other end of the room was more his idea of an interrogation chamber, with various torture implements surrounding a massive wood table.

An unknown symbol glistened on the wall above the table, and he stepped closer to study it. It appeared to be the stylized bronze outline of a hand cradling a golden flame. Tevinter writing slithered around the symbol, but these were ancient characters, not the contemporary Tevinter he had briefly studied in his youth. He could only make out a few words; "Flame", perhaps, or "Light"; something about washing, something about the Maker. Gilles came to his side, staring at the symbol with something like reverence. Andre turned a puzzled look to his second-in-command.

"Nice little lair! If I didn't know you I would say you hide girls in here. But where's the prisoner?"

Gilles smiled pleasingly, his teeth pearly white in his handsome face.

"Ah, yes, the prisoner… _Andre_, I'm afraid I have told you a fib or two…"

Muffled footsteps behind him, and when Andre tried to turn to face the newcomers, a massive arm coiled itself around his throat, squeezing expertly.

A few seconds of struggle, the choke tightening, then silence and darkness.

He didn't wake up, not when they undressed him, not when they poured the lyrium potion through a tube down his throat, a dose massive enough to turn him into a drooling vegetable. By the time he did open vague, empty eyes, the search party had already found him, naked in bed with the fast-bloating corpse of a strangled whore.

Later, the inquisitors would meticulously catalog the rich collection of decadent or heretic books in the secret room; then they would have them burned. One particularly perceptive inquisitor would even wonder at the faint outline of a symbol on the wall, but of course the bronze hand, with its golden flame, was long gone.

The Light Bearers kept their secrets well.

* * *

Kings' Hall was pretty much the smaller brother to the Landsmeet Hall, a big, square, utilitarian affair with sturdy wooden floors, elevated galleries, and in Leliana's opinion, a glaring lack of refinement that made her wonder why none of the successive queens of Ferelden had ever demanded that the place be torched as an insult to esthetics. She caught sight of Anora and smirked. Probably for the same reason the Queen wore the horrific offspring of moccasins and slippers that passed for court shoes around here: tradition, habit, practicality.

Under Zevran's appreciative gaze, Leliana downed her glass of fine Fereldan whisky in one gulp, sighing contentedly as the peaty delight warmed her throat and stomach. It was her second glass; the first had been entirely wasted on recovering from the Oghren experience. She shuddered. Once in Val Royaux, she and Marjolaine had made a particularly messy escape, swimming through a long stretch of the Orlesian capital's remarkably modern, and remarkably filthy, underground sewers. Just like with Oghren, she had kept her mouth shut hermetically, but in both cases, part of the stench had seeped in… She was considering a third, "remedial" shot, when Zevran nudged her gently, signaling an opportunity to catch the Queen's attention between two spineless flatterers.

Leliana slid effortlessly amongst the courtiers, a black swan in a flock of ducks, and greeted Anora with _Curtsey n. 7, Vastly Exaggerated for Provincial Dignitaries_. A shadow of a smile passed on the queen's lips, and Leliana, her demeanor all humble and admiring, diagnosed a case of serious emotional constipation.

"Your majesty…"

"Ah, you must be Leliana. I heard so much about you on the march from Redcliffe; the Warden was positively beside herself at the idea of leaving you in Denerim. How _bizarre_ that she left in such a hurry after finding you."

_Straight kick to the groin. Nice. Had Leliana known that the Queen trained as a rogue, she would have brought her daggers._

Anora's smile widened imperceptibly as the bard acknowledged the blow.

"At any rate, it is good to see you here, and in good health. I hear you suffered quite the grievous wound in the battle."

"Your Majesty is too kind. It was but a scratch, but the fatigue got the better of me..." And Anora interrupted her _again_.

"Humility is the hallmark of a true hero… Ah, talking about which…" Anora fixed something behind the bard's shoulder, her frigid expression thawing at last to give way to a careless, bright smile. Whoever the person who just caught her gaze, he or she meant the world to her. Leliana turned to greet the newcomer, taking in the broad shoulders, the long, dark hair, surprisingly bereft of white streaks, the tired, almost haunted eyes.

"Father!" Anora's voice was shrill with childish delight; throwing her royal demeanor to the dogs, she rushed to embrace the man.

"Hello, my Queen." Warden Loghain allowed himself a rare display of public affection as he held his only child. Leliana had never imagined the Wardens' bane as an affectionate father; yet it fit perfectly. Life was never black and white. Leliana was preparing to make a discreet exit – the boon would have to wait - when Loghain took notice of her, something like amusement flashing in his dark eyes.

"I hope you will forgive an old fool's manners", he said as he gently disentangled himself from his daughter, "Anora and I have hardly spoken since I regained consciousness this morning." He offered a hand. "I am Loghain, now proudly of the Grey Wardens of Ferelden."

"Leliana, at your service. I can relate, for the sleeping." Leliana quipped, realizing how much more at ease she now felt among warriors than among courtiers. "I also seem to spend a lot of time sleeping these days".

"So I've heard… Anora, if you will excuse us for a moment, there are things I wish to discuss with the Warden's companion."

Anora nodded curtly, her icy carapace quickly freezing back in place as she turned to greet some blabbering Bannorn noble. Leliana took Loghain's offered arm, and they walked up wooden stairs to one of the side galleries, above the press of courtiers. She didn't see Zevran follow, but she felt his gaze on her, vigilant and, predictably, amused. The gallery was home to a collection of hunting trophies, and Loghain absorbed himself in the contemplation of a snarling, glassy-eyed werewolf head, the yellow fangs almost as long as Leliana's index fingers.

"I owe the Warden more than my life," he finally said. Leliana arched an eyebrow in surprise.

"I owe her my honor", he continued, "and a chance to serve my country in spite of my faults. Not to mention," he added with a wry smirk, "the cumbersome, and ill-deserved, title of Hero of Ferelden that my daughter seems hell-bent on bestowing me."

_Why was he telling her about this?_

"…And now I understand that she has left. I suppose you wish to follow her?"

"I do." _In all the… What business of his was that? Why were they having this conversation anyway?_

"And I don't suppose I can do anything to dissuade you?"

"Short of chaining me to Mount Drakon… no, I suppose you cannot. Why would you want to do that anyway?"

"Because an old man like me would respect Nyx's choice. But I _have_ been known to make mistakes. So… If there is anything the Queen's father can do to help, I pray you let me know."

_Well __**that**__ was unexpected... _

"As a matter of fact, there are a few things…" Leliana gave him a quick, artfully censored version of the blood magic story. When she was done, he eyed her with open irony.

"I expect this will not be a problem, with the Queen at least. You may not be aware of it, but Nyx probably saved my life on that rooftop… intentionally or not. I am sure Anora will not argue against that."

Loghain rested his elbows against the wooden balustrade, watching the milling nobility with obvious contempt. She fancied that she could hear his thoughts, spoken aloud in Nyx's raspy voice. _We sacrificed everything so that fools may be fools_. Leliana shivered.

"However", Loghain continued in a low voice, "The Crown cannot influence whether or not the Chantry decides to start an investigation, as you are no doubt aware. All I can guarantee is that, should you take action by yourself, the guard will not be over-zealous."

Leliana nodded, feeling her mouth dry up. _Take action_. She had always known it would come to that. Yet to hear _that_ man say it… She just, really, wanted a drink now.

"… Was there anything else you needed?"

_The boon. Don't forget the boon_. Because without the boon, there'd be no assassin, and without assassin, she would get to slaughter three innocents – three _more_ innocents- with her own hands.

"Well, we need to see to the well-being of Nyx's companions. Would six hundred sovereigns be an acceptable boon?"

Loghain laughed heartily. "I am glad you did not ask Anora directly; she might have done something rash. Six hundred is a princely sum, but I think Anora will be glad to pay, under one condition: that Nyx stay away from Denerim for a few years. My daughter is busy using me as a figurehead for her reconstruction efforts, and she doesn't need the interference of another Hero of Ferelden. Do we have a deal?"

Leliana simply nodded. No need to be too formal when you're selling your soul.

* * *

Nyx lay on her back by the Templars' small campfire, waiting for the dreamless, black pit of sleep. The day had not been very tiring; all she had done was sitting on the saddle behind Ser Jehan, rolling from side to side with the animal's motion. That the Templar's mare was perfectly happy to carry her was further validation of her choices.

Staring blankly at the cold stars, Nyx carefully browsed through the catalogue of her memories, fire, battles and good times flashing by. She settled for something appropriate to her surroundings and immersed herself in the recollection.

_Flickering firelight, your hair ablaze; fascinating. I need to understand. I can create brighter flames… _

_Curled into a compact ball, chin on my knees, I watch you through half-closed lids, wondering. _

_You smile, perfectly aware of my spying; happy for it, maybe?_

"_The stars are out…"_


	4. Chapter 4: Peaty

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Peaty, with a hint of candied fruit**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx. I am having fun writing this. Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Leliana and Loghain parted without a word. Leliana may have been sleeping for days, but she felt that she needed a rest, badly. It was only now, with the tension threatening to overwhelm her sorely-shaken nerves, that she realized how much she loathed the idea of the killing to come. She was going to treat herself to a well-deserved shot of whisky and be off to bed in a blink, Fereldan protocol be damned.

She was halfway through the crowd, Zevran following with a questioning look, when a stout, middle-aged woman, clad in Chantry beige and brown robes, motioned to her excitedly. Zevran raised his eyes to the ceiling in theatrical exasperation and melted into the crowd. Leliana smiled back at the priest.

"Sister Leliana?" The woman's voice was as soft as her sunny, kindly expression; she literally radiated benevolence. Leliana literally beamed, the title reminding her of cherished, peaceful days in Lothering.

"Herself… Well… Technically I do not go by that title any more, but that's me… I mean… I am honored, Revered Mother." _Maker, look at yourself, stuttering like a schoolgirl!_ Leliana blushed; not a mask, but the result of a mixture of embarrassment and almost childish joy.

"Oh, child, you will _always_ be our Sister. Allow me to introduce myself: I am Sister Amelia, personal secretary to Her Holiness the Grand Cleric of Denerim." The priest lowered her voice in mock secret. "Or I _was_. Since the darkspawn attack, I seem to have turned into her personal decorator!"

Sister Amelia squeezed Leliana's arm and laughed at her own joke, a high-pitched chuckle that evoked a plump, cheerful hen. The bard tried to follow suit, but the reference to Chantry destruction had summoned painful images – altars covered in caked blood, violated nuns lying in filth– and laughter caught in her throat. _Why do_ _I have to be so morbid,_ she reproached herself.

The older woman seemed to notice her unease, and she gently patted her arm, concern showing in her grey eyes.

"I am sorry", she said softly. "I am cursed with a quick tongue and a slow wit, as my mother used to say. We have all lost so much in this war."

Leliana cleared her throat. "No, I… _I_ apologize. It was an innocent joke, it's just that…" She shook her head, fiery strands brushing her cheeks, a train of panicked thoughts dashing through her mind like a demented procession. _It' just that they laid me in the Revered Mother's blood on the altar dirty claws insane eyes and they held me and they almost did that to me like they did to the others dirty claws black blood and Maker where were you where when they prayed for mercy… _

Eyes closed, teeth clenched. Breathing to regain control.

"There, there, I'm sorry I upset you, child." Arms around her, the smell of clean woolen robes and unscented soap, so familiar, the arms rocking her gently… Leliana's muscles started to relax; she let herself go in the motherly embrace, trembling slightly; breathing in, breathing out.

"Allow me to fetch you a drink, to make up for my mistake, shall I? After all, we are not in a convent, and there _is_ cause for celebration today." The motherly arms let go, moving away from her, and Leliana stood in the cold light, acutely aware of the many eyes fixed on her; she quickly rearranged her features, a perfect imitation of detachment.

Sister Amelia was back in an instant, carrying two crystal glasses filled to the brim with amber-colored liquid.

"Thank you", Leliana said; her voice ringing too fragile in her own ears. The smell of the liquor was lovely, peat smoke, sea breeze and a hint of candied fruit; definitely the same malt she had been sampling earlier. The bard in her scoffed at the coincidence, and she angrily silenced _her_. She took a rather large sip, the liquor's burn feeling so good; her head swam a little.

"That's nothing, child. Now where were we?"

Sister Amelia had an inextinguishable thirst for chitchat, and before long they were sitting in a lonely corner of the great hall, Leliana now cheerful and relaxed like she had not been in weeks, telling tales of her travels with the Grey Warden; she even gave the smiling, nodding Sister Amelia some rather… intimate details of her relationship with the sorceress. But Amelia understood, didn't she? She was so much like Leliana's mother, or what little she remembered about her mother: caring and patient, only older and plumper. How she missed her mother… Leliana realized that she was rather _too_ drunk, but it didn't matter either, because Amelia would understand and forgive her, no matter what.

* * *

Leliana was staggering down a dark stairway leading to one of the Palace's ruined rear doors, her arm wrapped loosely around her new-found mother's shoulder, when a short, angry figure coalesced from the shadows, a hidden dagger hissing softly as it was unsheathed.

"A little late to take a stroll, _Suora_?" Zevran's voice, always suave, a razor dipped in honey.

"Sefran, nooo… Sshishta…" Leliana's tongue was too thick, her lips too numb, but she couldn't let Zevran crash the party: Sister Amelia was taking her to the Grand Cleric herself, who wished to hear her tales of darkspawn and high feats. The Grand Cleric was a kind woman; she was going to help Leliana find Nyx and everything was going to be all right. Sister Amelia had promised…

"_Shut up_, Leliana." No honey here. The elf was furious at her, even though she didn't quite understand why.

Amelia's grey eyes were anything but motherly as she evaluated her chances. Lose the target of opportunity or risk the mission… She shoved the redhead at the elf, dashing past in the same, lightning-fast move. Zevran caught the half-conscious bard, staggering slightly; his head turned calmly to follow Amelia's escape. At this moment, Zevran and the plump "priest" shared the exact same thought:

_Amateur._

Then Amelia's foot caught in the thin, near- invisible steel wires strung across the dark stairway, and she started her long, long descent towards the cold, hard tiling below.

* * *

_Encoded Message; gobbled down with the carrier pigeon by a lone, roving genlock._

_To my dearest Sister and Elder in Revelation, _

_Hail in the Maker's Light!_

_I must inform you of a development in our Most Sacred Mission. _

_As requested, I have inquired, to the best of my much strained ability, of Maleficar Nyx's known Associates in Ferelden, several of which are now Queen Anora's hosts. Essential information on each individual was provided in another message, sent this morning with our fastest bird._

_I have obtained new information pertaining to the human Bard and former Lay Sister known as Leliana. We are now positive that, unlike the Antivan elf known as Zevran, Leliana has been the willing and frequent object of the Maleficar's unnatural lust. The sinner is utterly lost to the Maker's good ways, and is most dangerous, as one of our beloved Sisters learned at a dear price._

_Barring other orders from you, I shall initiate drastic measures against the sinner, for fear that the Binding may yet occur. _

_Yours in the Maker's Light,_

_Sister S._

_

* * *

_

As poor Andre had once pointed out, the Inquisition's headquarters were only a short stroll from the Redoute's massive battlements. While the Templar fortress was all verticality, with cliff-like walls and lofty towers reaching for the sky, Chateau des Anges was a collection of low, unassuming white stone buildings housing row after row of carefully maintained archives, offices, chapels and auditoriums. The whole complex sprawled on beautifully landscaped gardens, where even the vegetal realm submitted to that most functional of shapes: the square.

During daytime, the place was home to a multitude of clerks, all of them affirmed in the ways of the Maker, all of them busily collecting, comparing and collating intelligence. Information flowed, nay, gushed here from every little corner of Thedas, thanks to the close-knit network of Chantries throughout the Andrastian world. Yearly copies of birth and marriage registries, precise account of all mages' and their phylacteries' whereabouts, news of peasant uprisings, reports of unorthodox beliefs and even gossip of the convoluted affairs of the Orlesian nobility, courtesy of their personal priests, were but a part of all that was compiled here by an army of disciplined, well-indoctrinated little hands.

Someone once said that if the Templars were the Chantry's right arm, and the Divine its heart, then the Inquisition was its brain: an organ of wisdom, scheming, and _fear_. That last attribute was not immediately perceptible, unless one was one of the few privileged, or the many unfortunate, to be admitted within the inner sanctum, the sprawling underground complex of prisons and interrogation rooms which, unlike the Redoute's moldy dungeon, saw a great deal of activity these days.

Gilles du Marais was among the privileged, those happy few who could enter the Inquisition's dungeons and come out intact, physically at least. He strode along the maze of clean, white-walled tunnels with the assurance of a man who knew the place intimately. The passageways were clean and well-lit, and he could clearly see the haggard and broken form lying in each of the holding cells he passed by; men and women, human and elves; heretics and deviants of every denomination; here and there, the occasional mage, shackled in chains of forged lyrium that caused blisters and a slow poisoning of the blood. This was a place of cold, organized despair, the just reward of sinners; a first taste of the Maker's ire.

Gilles smiled brightly as one of the prisoners extended a small, supplicating hand through impeccably polished steel bars. _Sinners never learn_. He caught the thin arm and shoved it hard it against the bars; the bones snapped as he walked by, hardly slowing down at all.

The screams of the impious were music to his ears.

He found his brother and sister in the small underground auditorium, only the three of them, the Orlesian leaders plus the Tevinter envoy. This last one he eyed suspiciously; although he did not feel the hideous taint of magic in him, one could never be sure with those barbarians. The worst mages, he knew, were the ones who could hide their curse. The man returned his gaze with cool assurance, black eyes shining in a weathered, tanned face.

"Brother Gilles. Hail in the Maker's Light."

The Grand Inquisitor's voice made him snap to attention, his armored boots coming reflexively together with a loud clang.

"Dear Sister. Hail in the Maker's Light."

Grand Inquisitor Diane Pellerin was a petite woman in her fifties; her tiny, round eyes, long nose and quick, restless demeanor gave her the benign appearance of a small rodent. She was also one of the ailing Divine's most trusted advisors, which made her an enormously _powerful_ rodent. And, like Gilles, she was a Light Bearer, one of the few, one of the Maker's true Chosen.

"Dear Brother, I believe that congratulations are in order. I understand that the Divine will look to you to lead the Templars after your predecessor's scandalous demise. Confirmation of your investiture is imminent."

Gilles bowed respectfully.

"I only wish to advance the Maker's Reign, Dear Sister."

"Indeed, Brother, His Reign _is_ upon us."

Gilles looked up quickly, his heart racing in fervor and excitement.

"The signs?" he whispered hoarsely.

Diane nodded.

"Yes, Brother. The signs are present; but they are not _quite_ as expected. You already know that our little Fereldan protégé has shown no sign of possession. We now believe that his sister survived the purging of the family, and that the Devourer may have chosen her over a male avatar."

"That is… surprising, Sister." Gilles considered the information for a moment. A female Wolf Born was indeed a surprise, but nothing in the Canon expressly excluded it. What really mattered, however, were the dreams, and what they meant for Thedas. The Grand Inquisitor acquiesced, as though reading his mind. Gilles wondered uneasily whether she _could _read his mind. There were tales of the Inquisitors...

"Indeed, Brother, what is surprising is that the Binding did _not_ happen. For whatever reason, either the Wolf Born has found no suitable mate, or he –she- has, inexplicably, failed to perform the sacrifice. As you know, either way suits us."

"I… Yes, I understand. Are we sure that the Binding has failed?"

"Brother, do refrain from insulting my intelligence!" The inquisitor's tone was sharp and definitive, the tone of a woman more used to fearful deference than questioning. The Tevinter envoy hardly hid his amusement at the way she rebuked the Templar leader.

"Starting two days ago, all over Val Royeaux, trusted brothers and sisters have reported the same feeling in their dreams. So have I. You know of what I speak: _the maw in the dark_." The woman whispered the last words, as though someone, or something, could spy on them in this safest of sanctuaries. "The Wolf is coming, Brother, and the Light Bearers must be ready."

"The Templars will be ready," he said with a hint of bravado in his voice.

"Most certainly. I have already taken the liberty to order your Templars to send the Wolf Born to Orlais; I expect you will receive your new charge within a month."

Gilles's pale eyes almost popped out of his head in shock; the Tevinter envoy shot him an ironic look, making no pretense of hiding his scorn.

"You have him? The Wolf Born? Where?"

"_She_ sought refuge at the Ferelden Circle under unspecified circumstances; it appears that she was actually trained as a mage there. One of our new converts at the Ferelden Tower of Magi recognized the signs in her." The woman paused for a few seconds, no doubt to give him the time to appreciate the abysmal fault of the Ferelden brothers. He would have to do something about them, he thought confusedly. The inquisitor – Sister Diane- gently put a hand on his armored arm.

"There may be some… complications, Brother", she added softly. "We only just got the information, and when we did, the harm was already done. It seems that the local Circle took the regrettable initiative of giving her the Rite of Tranquility."

Gilles resisted the urge to wipe his forehead with a steel-gloved hand. In the eyes of the Maker, this day would surely count as a fair share of his trials.

"So… That means we have to find a way to undo the Rite?"

"Oh no," the Inquisitor purred. "That means _you_ have to find a way to unshackle her. _You_ are the head of the stupid Templars who let the Wolf Born strut around under their noses for over _ten years_, only to _neuter it_ when we needed it."

The Tevinter envoy burst into silent laughter.

* * *

Leliana groans and turns in the forgotten noblewoman's bed, sweating profusely as her body struggles to eliminate Amelia's powerful hypnotic.

Slowly, her breath becomes deeper, her mind wandering into far reaches that are of the Fade, yet not quite of it. The visions start.

_She awakes in her chambers, high above the shimmering lights of the city. The sky above the faraway mountains is turning white already; she quickly wraps her hips in woven white light, pulling the threads of magic without thinking. _

_She waits until the first ray of sunlight filters through the huge, crystal bay, and she salutes the rising sun with the respect due to an ancestor._

_

* * *

_

Zevran wakes up very tired. Like thousands across Thedas, he has spent a good part of the night running from an unseen, but terrifyingly _real_ threat. Within moments, he has all but forgotten about it.

* * *

Nyx's eyes pop open at first light. She has slept perfectly; she feels… functional.


	5. Chapter 5: Victims and torturers

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Victims and torturers**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx. I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Leliana's head hurt, a throbbing ache which reminded her of her infamous brush with Dwarven ale. She heard the maid's soft knock and buried her face into her pillow, wishing to die. She hoped Runt would scare the woman off, but the smartass mutt was already familiar with the staff, and did nothing to help. The infernal woman would not give up, and Leliana surrendered, wincing at the sound of her own voice.

"Come in." The sound of the door opening, very soft footsteps – _not_ the maid's shuffling feet – and Leliana's hand slid quietly under the pillow where she kept a spare blade.

"Tsk, tsk… Now is not the time for such precautions, dear."

Leliana's head emerged tentatively from the bed covers, all tousled red hair and dark-circled eyes.

"Zev? What are _you_ doing here?" she asked accusingly, grimacing as the clear morning light pierced her eyes like tiny daggers.

"These days, a generic answer to this question would be, _looking out for an incompetent bard_. And a rather rude one at that, if I may add." There was a hint of anger in the elf's voice.

"I… Oh." Leliana's memories of the previous evening were patchy at best, but it was not too difficult to fill in the blanks. _The infiltrator, so perfectly attuned to her desires; the laced drink; the "friendly" grilling._ Nice job. Amelia's downfall had been her greed, going for the higher prize, a mistake Leliana had made a couple of times in the past, too. She lightly massaged her temples, trying to soothe the headache. She had been played like a lute, and were it not for the assassin, she would be back _there_…

Incompetent bard, indeed.

"Thank you, Zev. For looking out for a complete fool," she murmured.

"Don't mention it. But _do_ try to stay alive until we collect those six hundred. Now, unless you wish me to help you getting dressed…" Zevran spun smoothly on his heels, glided to the door with that uncanny grace common to elves and cats, and stopped abruptly, snapping his fingers in theatrical remembrance. "Ah, I almost forgot. You may want to have a chat with… what was her name? Sister Amelia, no?"

"With… Wait!" Leliana blurted, but the Antivan was already gone, whistling merrily.

_Showoff_…

* * *

They traveled at a solid pace; the Imperial Highway linking Orlais and Ferelden had undergone some repairs during King Cailan's brief reign; trade between the two countries had flourished as diplomatic relations unthawed. While Anora's ascent to the throne did not presage much good on the diplomatic front, the Templars and their silent charge met quite a few merchant caravans, mainly Orlesian traders looking to make their fortune by delivering sorely-needed goods to the war-torn kingdom. Surly mercenary guards eyed the trio suspiciously, but the merchants themselves greeted the Templars with a great show of respect, and exchanged pleasantries with Ser Jehan in the soft, liquid tongue that Nyx could read, but now found herself at a loss to understand.

They stopped for a quick lunch in an abandoned orchard, munching on dried meat and fresh apples. Nyx ate methodically, mindful that every bite should be suitably softened before she swallowed it. Ser Jehan seemed to enjoy the simple meal and pastoral surroundings, but Cullen's eyes never strayed from the little Tranquil, and when Nyx rose and walked away to empty her bladder, he simply followed from a short distance.

She felt it shortly after they left the orchard. She was riding behind Cullen, counting mechanically the stone arches of the Highway, when the crisis struck, announced by a big, lazy retch that sent her lunch cascading onto the Templar's white cuirass.

"Maker, what _now_?" Cullen growled as he turned to the Tranquil; just in time to catch her robes and stop her nose-dive to the ground.

* * *

Leliana took the time to enjoy a late, hearty breakfast before she allowed herself to think about the captured spy. She felt ravenous, her body probably compensating for the scanty fare of previous weeks. When she was done, her belly bulging a little from the food, the migraine all but gone, she roamed the corridors for a few moments. The Palace was a buzzing hive of artisans striving to erase the traces of the darkspawn assault, a rather Herculean endeavor. After a while Leliana asked a guard for Zevran's location, and was, unsurprisingly, directed to the Palace's underground cellars.

Following the guard's directions, she made her way down a spiraling flight of stairs and stopped before a rather unassuming iron door. Leliana had never liked "information retrieval", as bards in Orlais mockingly called the process; after being on the receiving end, the dislike had turned into something more. In a sense, the idea that Zevran or a Fereldan professional would handle the physical part made things even worse.

She pushed the heavy door open and was greeted by an animal scream, quite unlike Sister Amelia's motherly voice. It took all of Leliana's willpower for her _not_ to dart up the white stone stairs, run to her room, and curl up in a ball for the rest of the day, singing to herself and pretending that she didn't know what was going on. Instead, she moved on past row after row of huge, oaken barrels, guided by the harsh voices of the interrogators and the occasional scream from the victim. Each step forward seemed to bring old fears back to life, and by the time Leliana reached her goal, she was covered in cold sweat, her teeth clenched so hard that she feared they might shatter.

She _had_ to do it. She was convinced that the infiltrator's attempt was connected with Nyx. Leliana mentally rehearsed what little she remembered of the conversation. Everything "Amelia" had asked, every question, was precisely and artfully aimed at getting the particulars of her relationship with Nyx, with a secondary focus on the Warden's magic and personality. Brooding, Leliana stopped at the threshold of a small, brightly lit room.

"It is good that you have come." Zevran stood by the door with his arms crossed; he could have been a debonair craftsman, watching the work of his apprentices and maybe occasionally throwing an instruction or an encouragement. In the flickering candlelight, Leliana saw the tension in his body, the contained, subconscious excitement of a predator, and she averted her gaze. It reminded her too much of Marjolaine, of herself. Of Nyx, unleashing clouds of fire upon screaming men. There were some truths that Leliana just didn't wish to contemplate.

Amelia – there was no way she would ever refer to her as Sister now, she decided – was a different spectacle, but just as disturbing in her own way. The spy, now bereft of her Chantry robes, was shackled to an iron chair in the center of the room. Her flesh rippled in fatty folds on her robust frame, but there was nothing soft in the look she cast the bard, or in the way she clenched her teeth on a scream as the torturer, a jaded-looking soldier, tightened the vice-like apparatus clamped to her lower legs and feet.

"So…" Leliana's voice came out as a pitiful squeak, and she made an immense effort to adjust it: if not for Zevran's benefit, at least for her own. She succeeded quite nicely.

"… Did you learn anything?"

Zevran grinned; one of those sunny smiles that usually meant something was going to die.

"From your friend here: nothing. She is very devoted to her cause, to the extent of being willing to endure much unpleasantness. Which," he added loudly for the benefit of the sweating, glaring woman in the iron chair, "will surely happen, considering how pissed off the new rulers of Ferelden are with her intrusion."

"I didn't think they cared so much about me."

"They don't." An unpleasant, cracking noise was followed by a muffled scream. Leliana couldn't help looking, and flinched at what she saw in the grey eyes.

"They just don't want any bad publicity, do they?"

"Publicity, challenges to Anora's rule, shady conspirators posing as the Grand Cleric's assistant to infiltrate the palace… I would all look bad for the new ruling dynasty of Ferelden. Or so says my lovely, insatiable informer."

Leliana nodded. That the spy would not speak under torture was information in itself, and additional reason for Anora and Loghain's wariness. Professional spies, Orlesian bards and the likes of them, would fold quickly and try to strike a deal with their captors. Only lovers, patriots and other fanatics would resist beyond the point where real damage was inflicted. Some even relished it as a form of martyrdom. This whole thing was pointless.

Leliana could not bring herself to hate the panting woman; had circumstances been different, she thought, they could have been working together, maybe even ended up friends or lovers. The dull pain that radiated through her bones was a reminder of what they had in common. It was almost too much to bear; Leliana's body did not quite understand that _she_ was not to be the victim today, and clamored to be away from this place. Was it too much to ask of life, she wondered, to never set foot again in a torture chamber?

Leliana walked to one of the guards and put her hand on the man's shoulder, a gesture that was equally familiar and commanding.

"I think you could use a rest. I will relieve you for a while." The man grumbled in thanks and exited with his comrades in search of a pitcher of wine – he _was_ visibly relieved, and the thought struck Leliana that he might be relatively new to the sort of duties that had befallen him today. Under Zevran's curious scrutiny, Leliana turned to the sweating victim and loosened the screws carefully, trying not to look at the device's contents.

"Is this the part where you pretend to be my friend?" Amelia's voice was but a low croak. "Spare yourself the trouble, bitch. You will get nothing from me."

"I am not asking you anything." There was a jug of water on a low table laden with unpleasant instruments; Leliana gently lifted it to Amelia's parched lips. She remembered the thirst, so clearly. The spy hesitated briefly, but craving overcame her suspicion and she drank avidly. A trace of color came back to the plump cheeks, but Amelia's expression remained defiant, even as Leliana wiped the sweat off her face with a rather grimy-looking rag. A long silence ensued as they simply stared at each other, lost in vastly different thoughts.

After a while the guards came back, visibly rejuvenated by their visit of the cellars. There wasn't much more Leliana could do for the prisoner, except maybe offer a prayer. This she did; her lips moving silently. The words felt hollow. Leliana struggled to keep going, more out of a sense of duty to the victim than anything. She heard a quaint, hissing sound and opened her eyes. Amelia was laughing, tears of mirth streaming down her puffy cheeks.

"You fucking heathen!" The older woman finally managed between two fits of hilarity, "You fucking heathen! Look at prissy yourself; The Devourer's slut saying the Chant! Ah, my, thanks for a good laugh…"

"The _what_? What do you mean?" Leliana blurted. The words had cut deep, and she felt her face flush with heat, her hand clenching involuntarily into a fist.

The fit of laughter died as suddenly as it had come, and the grey eyes stared at Leliana with steady, intense abhorrence.

"I think you know what I mean. But don't you worry: we'll get you before _she_ does."

Grinning, Amelia stuck out her tongue in an absurdly childish grimace; Leliana cringed and stumbled back as the spy's jaw muscles bulged fiercely. Something wet fell onto the grimy floor, and Amelia's laughter rose again, gurgling.

* * *

"I still think it's a trick."

Ser Jehan eyed the younger Templar sternly. For all Jehan's respect for the Holy Order's leadership, he was starting to entertain misgivings about this particular recruit, and not just because of the Fereldan's obviously rural upbringing and limited intellect. Besides a fanatical faith, all recruits had to demonstrate exceptional abilities in their chosen walk of life; this much Ser Jehan knew, and from what he understood, Cullen was not lacking in either department.

The problem, he decided as his new brother poked the unconscious elf with the tip of his boot for the ninth time in maybe an hour, was that Cullen seemed to take a rather personal approach to the mission. Personal feelings weren't welcome in a Templar at the best of times; when you were tasked with redeeming the world, well... They ranked on a par with cholera on the list of things to avoid.

"Sit down, Brother Cullen. Now."

He didn't _have_ to call the young man "Brother". Cullen was but a novice, a most precarious status in the Order. But the fraternity, the sense of a shared identity, was essential to the Order, one of the reasons why they had endured through the centuries; plotting, watching, preparing. And it wasn't as if Jehan honored an outsider with the title. The kid would become a full-fledged Light Bearer… or he would be discarded. There was a reason for the skull walls in the underground sanctuaries.

For now, however, Cullen was proving strong-headed and downright annoying, with his obsessive belief that the elven Tranquil was somehow plotting against them, and may jump them at any time. Tranquil mages were about as aggressive as snails, and in Jehan's opinion, just as interesting. Granted, this particular Tranquil used to be a Grey Warden, and met a certain number of criteria that made her useful for the Order. Still, a snail was a snail. Jehan sighed. He'd had this conversation with the kid a couple of times already, but it looked like he was in for more explanation.

"She's fried."

Cullen looked briefly away from the mage to throw the older man a bovine glance.

"Huh?"

"She's _fried_, kid. Your friends at the Tower, they burned part of her brain when they gave her the Rite. That's what the Lyrium brands do: they don't damage the skin and bone, but they go: _pschhhh_ inside. It doesn't show on the surface, but believe me: she's cooked as a boiled egg. She won't cast a spell on you."

"But what… What if she uses…" Cullen lowered his voice, as if naming the forbidden school could somehow summon a whole convent of maleficarum, "…blood magic? I mean, she wouldn't need to use Fade energy or anything…"

"I just told you. It's not the Fade, or the _mana_. It's physical. If I gouge out your eyes, you won't see me, yes?"

Cullen seemed to ponder over the information for a while; then he started again, with all the pigheaded insistence of a Southern numbskull.

"You don't know _her_. You don't know what she can do."

Jehan raised an eyebrow at the hint of distress in the younger Templar's voice.

"She killed Uldred and the others. She pretended to help. But she's really the worst of them. The others, they could not break me. But _this one_-"

Cullen stopped mid-sentence, as though the memories were too painful. Or maybe, Jehan thought, he had been on the brink of revealing some dirty little secret of his. Jehan didn't like this one bit.

He frowned. This should have been an easy mission: retrieve a – terribly important- living package and a rookie, trot along the Highway to Val Royeaux, the end. Now, the "package" went into convulsions every time they tried to move it further North, and the novice, that promising survivor of the Ferelden massacre, was turning out to have serious issues with said package. Jehan was sorely tempted to kill the kid and call it a day.

He closed his eyes and murmured a quick prayer. He was a quick-tempered man, and sometimes, his temper caused him to entertain guilty thoughts, but he would not give in to temptation. He would carry on with the mission, no matter what, for the Maker's Reign. At the moment, the mission involved stuffing some knowledge into a peasant's kid thick noggin.

"Brother Cullen?"

Cullen jumped slightly. He had resumed his obsessive watching of the unconscious mage, rocking slightly back and forth as though sitting still made his buttocks itch.

"Ser?"

"How much do you know about our credo?"

"I…" Cullen squinted in concentration and started to recite. "We bear the Maker's Light through the Age of Darkness. We stand pure, the Chosen Ones, and prepare His Reign. We wield the Light which shall consume the Wicked."

"And were you told what this means?"

"Very little, Ser. Just that the Maker's Reign is coming soon, and that I have been chosen to fight alongside the Chosen Ones. To smite the wicked, Ser. I take it that's the Maleficarum, and the heathens, and…"

Jehan rose to his feet. The conversation was going exactly where he wanted it to. They had set up camp in a ruined farm, a short distance from the Highway; they were hidden from sight by crumbling walls and there were no prying eyes to fear. Jehan decided that it was time to make a little impression on the novice.

"The Wicked", he said softly but firmly, "are all sinners, all those who stand between the Maker and His Reign. You will receive further instruction on the subject. For now, you should understand this: the Wicked are not just Maleficarum and heretics. The Wicked are _all_ who harbor wicked thoughts."

Jehan took a step towards the novice and let the Light radiate through his own body, blinding.

"Do _you_ harbor wicked thoughts, Brother Cullen?" Jehan's voice rolled deep and harsh, and Cullen whimpered, recoiled in fright, covering his eyes.

Jehan took another step and Cullen's trembling shadow jumped onto a scorched stone wall. The temperature inside the ruin was getting noticeably higher.

"Well? Do you?"

"I… No! I swear! I only wish to serve the Maker!"

Jehan smiled. He believed that the boy was sincere, but for now, it didn't really matter. Should Cullen's faith falter, fear would surely keep him on the righteous path.

As he called the Light back to the deep recesses of his soul, Ser Jehan thought he caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of his eye. He looked at the Tranquil, but she lay pale and perfectly still; from where he stood he couldn't even tell if she was breathing. He frowned, trying to recall the sensation: something like black smoke, slithering, receding quickly as his own radiance dimmed.

It was almost, he thought, as if the shadows had coiled themselves around the elf to protect her from the Light.


	6. Chapter 6: Dead pearls

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Dead pearls**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

It was a shame that the Pearl had burned to the ground, along with a large chunk of the surrounding buildings. Still, most of the staff had escaped the massacre thanks to Denerim's prime brothel's underground shelter, a real life-saver originally designed to protect customers against spousal irruption – that, and cater to the needs of the dungeon crowd, of course. Now Sangha's crew operated from an array of brightly colored tents, most of them bought from the Dwarven merchants that followed the army like a cloud of gnats. Why in Andraste's sweet name would cave-dwelling folks make and sell _tents _puzzled the big-bosomed Madam to no end, but there was no passing this opportunity.

Business was excellent. Soldiers away from their families generally itched for release, and victorious armies were like teenaged boys: boisterous, eager, and easily pleased. Sangha had hired a makeshift band of minstrels, and their discordant efforts hardly covered the groans and giggles that perpetually drifted from the flimsy canvas walls. The whole place had an air of country fair, with jolly, raucous soldiers lining up to get their mugs filled from salvaged ale barrels and telling high tales of their supposed prowess – martial and other. The air smelled of spilled beer, sweaty groin, and the tiny meat skewers that a handful of Alienage survivors sold in the rubble-filled street; for once, nobody seemed to mind the elves. All in all, not exactly the Pearl's usual crowd or atmosphere, but as one of the girls had stated while Sangha applied ice to her bruised buttocks, these were _not_ usual times.

And the suckers paid good gold. In spite of many "heroes'" complaints, Sangha applied a war premium of fifty silvers on top of the usual fee, which brought the price of love to just below a sovereign. The punters complained, discussed, and invariably forked out the cash in advance. In Sangha's opinion, this was only fair wealth redistribution.

The problem, she thought as she carefully counted the cash handed over to her by a pair of inebriated Dwarven warriors, was that she had a hard time keeping an eye on her personnel. Close to half the ladies - and boys- in her employ now were short-timers. Meaning that they were hungry Blight survivors with no particular skill or interest in the job, and a bunch of personal issues related to the massacre of friends and family. These birds tended to pop up and disappear faster than Sangha could memorize their names and faces.

Take the redhead in the blue dress, for example. Try as she might, Sangha could not recall her name or anything about her. Yet there she was, in a far corner, drinking and playing coy with two rather rural-looking gentlemen.

One thing Sangha was certain of was that those guys had _paid_, so she was not overly worried when the redhead led the two punters to a vacant pavilion.

Hopefully the redhead would remember the ten-silver premium for the Antivan milk sandwich.

* * *

"Come on, Payton, it will be _fun_!"

Ser Payton hesitated as Denly beckoned from the tent's opening, his arm passed around the girl's waist. It was Denly who had insisted that they share the whore, "because hey, that's how they do it in the city!"

Ser Payton would have preferred to have the redhead for himself; and, if he was to believe the looks she had been giving him from the start, so would the girl. But it was Denly who took all the decisions, as usual. Denly, blond and handsome, who always managed to get the Arl's compliments even though Payton was the better fighter. Now, even though Payton was a bloody _hero_ in his own right, he still allowed himself to be pushed around. Through the slight haze of lukewarm ale, he realized that he probably liked it, too.

In the end, it was not Denly's assurances of fun that decided Peyton. It was the girl, of course. It was the _longing_ in those blue eyes, the way they never left him, even as she stroked his friend's cock through his woolen trousers. Something about her expression said that whatever they did, whatever other men did to her body, she would only be _his_. The girl slowly extended a delicate, white hand, and he knew he _had_ to touch her.

Denly said something to the redhead's ear and she laughed softly; not the sound you'd expect from a whore in an army brothel, but a musical and uncaring sound that reminded Payton of his cherished sister. The girl whispered something and he saw Denly's ears turn crimson. Payton felt a pang of jealousy and hurried to take the girl's hand, walking with big, assertive strides that were not at all like him. Her smile broadened in approval, and her hand was in his at last, light, cool and incredibly fragrant as he bowed and kissed it, treating her like the lady he wished her to be. He wondered how much the big-titted madam would ask for him to take the girl away for the night. Maybe he could afford it, and send Denly to hell just this once…

Denly laughed like an idiot, and made a rude comment about not starting the licking outside the tent. Payton gritted his teeth and contemplated punching the bastard's teeth in. He saw a hint of concern in the girl's expression and checked his anger. Of course she would be in trouble if customers fought over her. Maybe the matron would even beat her. There were thin scars on the girl's naked forearm, like nigh- invisible cracks on precious porcelain; not disfiguring, but adding to her fragility. The pattern was too regular to be accidental. He wondered who had done this to her; his anger rose again.

Denly pulled the girl inside, laughing, and her hand disappeared between the flaps of fabric, still reaching for him. Like a call for help. Payton was confused. They had… paid to nail the girl together, hadn't they? So why did he feel like he had just seen something _dirty_, as though Denly was a snickering pervert dragging the poor lass by force?

He stepped in, his eyes struggling to adjust to the gloom. The interior of the tent was very sparsely furnished: a mattress on the floor; a small closet, its broken doors hanging ajar, revealed piles of suspicious-looking spare sheets. Opposite the door stood an incongruously ornate Orlesian folding screen, allowing self-conscious punters to wash their junk in relative privacy. The place smelled a bit rank; or it would have, were it not for the girl's fragrance. _She_ smelled wonderful; the tiny space was filled with her.

The girl stood in the center of the tent, making little animal moans as Denly's lips wandered on her neck and shoulders. Payton's belly knotted in jealousy, but he felt her gaze find him in the shadow and he swallowed hard. The porcelain hand reached for him, and he hurried to take it; only this time the girl wanted more. Full lips parted in silent invitation, and he bent to her, all too aware of the other man drooling on her. Her kiss soothed his anger, light fingers running through his hair, the tip of her tongue flickering briefly, too briefly, on his dry lips.

The girl spoke; her musical voice easily covered the brothel's jolly racket.

"Why don't you gentlemen get comfortable while I prepare for you? Then I will show you a little _game_ from my homeland."

Nimble as a snake, the redhead slipped between Denly's avid claws and disappeared behind the screen, leaving the two men staring at each other. Denly made a funny face and pumped his hips, mimicking the vigorous humping he intended to give their new friend. Payton did his best to ignore him. He still couldn't believe that the girl was going to let this… _pig_… fuck her. And that he would have to watch, too. What the hell was he doing here?

Denly shrugged off the failure of his humorous attempt and started undoing his trousers.

"What are you doing?" Payton growled.

"Er… Payton? When a whore says "get comfortable", she really means "whip out your sword", you know?"

"Don't call her that."

"What? Are you _daft_? We just paid to ravage her! To go _darkspawn_ on her Deep Roads! You know, I give you money, you suck my lil' birdie, you're a… Come on, big boy, you can say it too…"

There they were again. Just because Payton spoke a little slow, and was nice to people, Denly thought it was okay to make fun of him. Never mind that the sarcastic little bastard stood a head shorter and a good fifty pounds lighter than him. Never mind that he had spent most of the Battle of Denerim hiding behind Payton's shield while the crazy maleficar burned the shit out of everything…

Payton tried to put all his scorn in his reply.

"I'm just sayin', try to act like a _gentleman_ for once, Denly."

Denly, naked as a worm – Payton couldn't help noticing that he was quite impressively hung, adding to his abhorrence of the guy – threw him a disgusted glance.

"You know, Payton, if you're going to be a pain in the butt, you should just go back to the Arl's estate and let _me_ enjoy the fine things in life."

Payton stepped forward, towering over the smaller man, the muscles of his back flaring like wings on each side of his massive torso.

"Don't think so. How about _you_ go? It's not like _you_ can make me."

"What in Andraste's sweet name are you saying? I _paid_ for this whore!"

"I _told you_…"

The redhead's voice rose from behind the screen, soft and soothing.

"Gentlemen, surely you are not going to fight over me? I assure you, I am willing and able to _take care_ of you both."

_Take care_. There was something in the way she uttered those two words, something that sent a shiver down Payton's spine. For an instant the charm was broken, and he considered going back to the Arl's estate and letting Denly have his way with the whore. Then the redhead's voice rose again, thick with sexual urgency, and he forgot all about the Arl's estate.

"Ser Payton, why don't you come over here and help me with my corset? Ser Denly, you will find a flask of brandy and glasses in the closet; perhaps you could have a drink before I join you?"

_Ha!_ Payton threw Denly a triumphing glare; the smaller man shrugged and walked to the closet, fumbling briefly to extract the flask from between the piles of sheets- an odd place to store booze, but hey, this was war. Payton squeezed his considerable bulk behind the screen and froze.

The redhead truly was a thing of beauty. She wore nothing but a red, lustrous satin corset which accentuated her curves. Blushing like a young boy, Payton took in the sight, his gaze drifting down from the deep, ivory valley of her breasts, gathered and propped up by the corset, to her flat belly, full hips, lower… He blushed some more at the sight of the thin, neatly trimmed stripe of red gold that led to unknown delights. The redhead's hands were held behind her back in a girlish, almost shy fashion.

He moved to embrace her, and she coiled around him, her head resting on his shoulder in a trusting, affectionate movement. Behind the screen, Denly eructed noisily; Peyton smiled to himself. The girl had thought of everything: the swine was going to drink himself unconscious while Payton enjoyed her. And he was going to treat her right. He burrowed his face in the red-gold mane and took in her scent; she reminded him of sunny afternoons and the cinnamon cakes his old nanny used to bake. Maybe he could see her again tomorrow. Maybe he could even take her out of this place, give her a lady's life.

The girl's head moved, her lips trailing on his neck, and he stood frozen in the expectation of her kiss. She whispered in his ear, her voice soft and filled with unspeakable sadness.

"I am sorry", she whispered, and the blade punctured Peyton's kidney. He stumbled in shock, the girl clinging onto him, holding him upright with surprising strength; the next flash of pain came at the base of his skull, and it was over.

Leliana stared at Peyton's motionless body for a long minute, then quickly washed the blood off her hands and got dressed – not the gaudy blue dress she had lifted from a nearby tent, but dirty breeches and a nondescript tunic. She gathered her hair into a bun and completed the disguise with a dirty leather cap. In the casual observer's eye, she would probably register as a lithe, working-class man. Carefully wiping the makeup off her face, she threw Denly's body a quick glance: the man's purple skin and convulsed features spoke volumes about Zevran's poisons. She stored the brandy bottle in her little knapsack, along with the glasses and the blue dress. Then she cut her way through the back of the tent and slipped quietly through the open-air bordello, a shadow walking among men.

_Two birds with one stone_. Leliana could not help feeling a little smug.

She hated herself for it.

* * *

Leliana wandered the ruined streets of Denerim. It seemed to her that an eternity had passed, but days ago, she had run in terror through these very roads and alleys.

Everywhere she looked she was met with sights of destruction and misery, a far cry from the royal Palace's relative comfort and abundance. She felt a pang of anger at Anora, working hard perhaps, but also feasting and blabbering while the townsfolk struggled to survive. Alistair would have had none of it, she thought glumly. Ultimately it was all Nyx's doing. Leliana knew that she was angry at the elf, on more than one account.

And yet Nyx had never wanted to be the one deciding the fate of Ferelden. All the elf had ever wanted was to decide her own fate; to be free to practice her magic. Leliana had brought her new hopes, and they had made plans. After the Blight they would travel together around the wide, wild world. They would wander until they found a place that accepted them. They would grow old together, and when Nyx's Calling came, she would not go to the Deep Roads. One morning, Nyx would borrow Leliana's dagger; she would leave with a last kiss, and she would end her life looking at the immensity of the sky.

But this was not to be. Nyx's destiny had been ordained long before her birth by a dark, forgotten power that cared little for love or freedom. Leliana clenched her fist, cursing the god's name silently. Fen' Harel, unholy _vermin_…

A shriek echoed somewhere to her right, impossibly high, barely human. The sound appeared to come from one of the flimsy, canvas-covered shelters that were home to many of Denerim's survivors. Leliana ran, her hand gripping her dagger under her tunic. She stopped when she found the source of the noise; daggers would not help here.

A woman crouched in the darkness of the shelter, clutching something to her breast; something white, small and scrawny, something that kicked and clawed with surprising strength. The child reared his head and screamed again; the terror in his voice sent a shiver down Leliana's spine. As she watched, the child's struggle stopped abruptly, the small body hard and stiff in his mother's hand. The woman wailed, calling the boy's name over and over again, and Leliana recoiled in shock, a hand pressed over her mouth, her mind struggling to make sense of what she saw, or _thought_ she saw, just before the grieving mother's hair covered the dead face.

A single, silver tear, rolling lazily from the dead boy's eye, bright and round like an obscene pearl.


	7. Chapter 7: Saying goodbye

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Saying goodbye**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Leliana found Zevran basking in the sunlight amidst the Palace's ruined gardens. The elf lay bare-chested on a miraculously intact patch of grass, nibbling on candied crabapples. Thin ears adjusted slightly to follow her movement and a small, sticky projectile hurtled towards her nose. Leliana caught it between her thumb and index, smirking.

"Beware the Antivan crows, for even fruit is a weapon in their fierce hands!" she quipped as she popped the "weapon" into her mouth. The combination of the tart fruit and the caramel's sticky sweetness was… actually delicious, and she eyed the remaining sweets greedily.

"How did you find my poison?"

"Adequate."

Leliana sat on the cool grass beside the elf, feeling a strange mixture of unease and familiarity. This reminded her of the good times in Orlais, when she had lain in similar, careless chatter, telling high tales of her successful assignments. There was much in Zevran that reminded her of Marjolaine, she suddenly realized; not the nervous, increasingly paranoid woman who had betrayed her, but the younger, easygoing bard who was a generous as she was deadly.

Leliana didn't like the turn her thoughts were taking, and she hastened to go back to the subject at hand.

"Did you…"

Zevran rolled onto his back, sunlight rippling off his golden skin. Below his navel, Leliana noticed the faded, black swirl of a tattoo, drawing her eyes to… _Hem. Better look elsewhere._ The elf was very aware of her unease, and judging by his shadow of a smile, quite amused by it.

"Did I _what_, carissima? Steal some of the Palace's silverware? Sleep with the chambermaid?"

"I... don't think I needed to know any of this. Did you fulfill your part of the bargain?"

"I have the man's signet ring in my purse. Would you like to see it? It is customary for the Crows to bring back a little trinket, as proof of a job well done."

"Yes, we did it too." She had spoken without thinking, and regretted it instantly. She did not speak of these things; they belonged with the dark part of her life, the part she had left behind. The part she ought to be ashamed of.

Except that right now, sitting under the rich autumn light in the company of a half-naked, damnably attractive elf, she did not feel ashamed of her past. Not one bit. She wondered distractedly if that made her a bad person again.

"So this matter is settled. What now?"

Leliana took a little time to consider the question. She had no plan, no directions, nothing that could decently count as information. She needed to _move_.

"Now I will collect Anora's boon and we will share as planned. Also I would like to see Oghren and Sten, say goodbye…" Leliana's voice trailed off.

"Then you will go on Nyx's trail. You know she doesn't want you to find her, but you will go anyway."

Leliana simply nodded.

"That day in Fort Drakon, you never answered my question, you know. What _was_ that thing trailing you?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know, Zev. But it was…" Leliana closed her eyes an instant, recalling the greed in Sin's silver eyes as the creature reached for the dead elf child. Recalling the dull thud, the pain of the arrow punching through her neck...

"...It was _evil_. And it was drawn to Nyx. It wanted to hurt her through me, I think."

Zevran nodded slowly. She knew he saw the half-truth for what it was.

"And it may have something to do with her little weakness in Denerim, no? And with her spell gone wrong in the elven ruins? Maybe even with her unexpected… _growth spurt_, hmm?"

She simply nodded, staring at the floor. Leaves of grass glistened in the afternoon light like a thousand tiny, raised spears; a minute green army declaring war on the unsuspecting world.

"You think it is all because of _you_."

She started, raised her eyes in surprise. Zevran rolled effortlessly to his knees, bringing his face inches from hers. Anger danced in the brown eyes.

"You keep telling yourself that you are responsible for everything. It's the guilt. It eats at you and it makes you fumble around like an amateur. Nyx is an adult. Her decisions are her own."

She bristled at his cheek. The elf was intruding in very private matters, he was rude and patronizing, and quite annoyingly, he was _right_.

"I can take care of my own business, Crow, why don't you mind yours?"

Zevran's lips parted in a thin, cheerless smile.

"You made it my business when you let me save your perfectly chiseled butt, dear. Or have you forgotten already? Guilt-addled Crows live short lives. I hear it's the same for bards. Ciao."

Throwing his white linen shirt over his shoulders, Zevran started into the Palace's direction with quick, nervous strides. Leliana watched him climb the entrance stairs and disappear into the shadow of the gate. She lingered in the garden for a while as the sun inched down towards the roof, pondering the truths behind Zevran's accusations, finding him right on almost every count. Her guilt made her weaker, timid, and more susceptible to manipulation. If she was really to set alone on the Warden's trail, she would need to steel herself, to bring her old persona back from the dead.

It wasn't so hard, she thought with a little shiver; tracking and seducing Ser Peyton and Ser Denly had felt all too natural, the thrill of the chase hardly spoiled by the compulsory, bloody ending. She had enjoyed manipulating them, turning their fantasies against themselves and against each other. She had enjoyed the power she held over them: absolute, arbitrary, terribly invigorating. _Power_… she thought of Nyx, of the sorceress' magic flowing through her veins and shaping itself into a blazing arrow; of a man's torso exploding in a flower of flame and light. Leliana shuddered under the waning sunlight, not because of the killing – she had seen many a bloody feat in her hectic, adventurous life- but because of the way it sent her pulse racing, of the subtle heat she felt rise in her. She wondered, not for the first time, whether she was out to try and save Nyx from the darkness that was within her… Or the other way around.

A look at the declining sun told her that she was running late. Following on Zevran's steps, Leliana entered the Palace, turning right towards the aisle occupied by various administrations. The clerk at the Treasury eyed her suspiciously – she still wore her working-man's attire, minus the cap, her silken red hair flowing over the dirty tunic. Leliana gave the man the papers signed by Anora's hand and his behavior turned obsequious. She knew his type well; they had petty egos, enjoyed the appearance of power, and were incredibly easy to play. But she was not inclined to play, and she ignored the man as he embarrassed himself with shoddy pleasantries and finally disappeared behind a massive iron door – she distractedly noted the number and make of the locks. Breaking into the Palace's vaults would be difficult, she mused, but by no means impossible. Of course, there would be dogs. There were _always _dogs in Ferelden.

The man came back, lugging two small saddle bags which he carefully emptied on his desk in a small, glittering avalanche. He took a long time counting the small, bright gold coins, piling them neatly on his desk before he poured them back into the bags. Leliana thanked him profusely, just for the sake of watching him puff up like a grey, bespectacled rooster.

She was a little out of breath as she hauled her catch back to her room; seven hundred sovereigns were not just a lot of money, they were a lot of weight for a girl to lug around. She hid the saddle bags under her mattress- there probably were no decent thieves around, apart from herself and Zevran.

She had just gotten a change of clothes when Oghren knocked at the door, his voice already thick with liquor fumes. To be fair, Leliana could not remember ever seeing him sober.

"Honey? I'm hooome…"

Leliana flung the door open and the dwarf gave her his sunniest, buck-toothed smile, a sight that was marginally less scary than a hurlock's death snarl. Then he pursed his lips with obvious intent. Leliana ducked nimbly past him and into the corridor.

"Get lost, Oghren," she said affectionately. "Where are we going?"

"Can't seem to find one working tavern in this forsaken city. So Sten and I, hem, how do you say that? Requisitioned a bit of lamb and drink. We're going to have a barbecue at Fort Drakon."

* * *

The barbecue was not a bad idea. Sure, it could be considered in bad taste, in a place where dozens of men and elves had been broiled alive by the Archdemon's fiery breath. Sure, Leliana still couldn't help throwing nervous looks at the stairs from time to time, vaguely expecting to see a glint of burning silver in the doorstep's shadow; for the first half hour or so, the bard unconsciously kept her neck tucked in her shoulders.

After a while, however, the warm ale and Zevran's expert fingers working at her shoulders dissipated her nervousness, and she started to warm up to her companions' choice of a meeting place. In the end, this was not a bad spot for the little band of brothers' final get-together. A good place to remember, catch up on the lost days, and finally say goodbye. After a few pints of ale, even the qunari started to take part in the conversation in more than monosyllables.

Leliana sat on the stone floor between Sten and Runt – the mabari's bulk shielded her from Oghren's attempts at getting close- and listened intently at the stories of Nyx's adventures in Denerim, narrated in Zevran's plain, ironic style. She gasped when she heard of Arle Howe's end and Anora's rescue.

"So _she's_ responsible for the Arl of Denerim's estate burning to the ground? I heard it was an accident."

Zevran laughed. "I suppose that conjuring a fiery hurricane under a wooden roof counts as an _accident_. We were all lucky to get out with our lives, you know."

Leliana nodded, a smile playing on her lips. This was typical Nyx: fast, straightforward and utterly reckless. She could picture the little elven mage standing cross-armed before the inferno and inquiring of the closest exit in a slightly worried voice.

Oghren lifted his mug.

"Long live the Warden! May the hair on her back grow long with the years!"

"Elves _don't have_ body hair", Zevran sighed as he lifted his mug.

"Huh? Then what d'ya cling to… "

"Never mind… To the Warden!"

"To the Warden!" all replied in chorus.

"To the Warden!" said a pleasant, aged voice that didn't belong to any of the Denerim companions. Leliana's eyes widened in surprise as she recognized the newcomer.

"Hey, if that's not the old frigid mare… whasshername…" Oghren grunted unceremoniously.

"Wynne," Leliana completed diplomatically. Wynne was still her old self, snowy hair, grandmotherly gaze and all. Despite the circumstances of her leaving the Warden's service, Leliana felt happy to see the old lady. Wynne studied her intently, and Leliana thought she saw a shadow of worry pass in the faded eyes.

"How have you been, Leliana? You look well, but there is something about you…"

"Leliana has been through a lot, _carissima_. We have all been through rather… interesting times, while you no doubt kept working at this gorgeous silhouette of yours…" Zevran slid by Leliana's side, dark and smooth as a snake's shadow. He had never professed any special fondness for the old enchanter, and forgiveness was _not_ in his nature.

"Zevran Arainai. I am glad to see that the Blight spared you," Wynne retorted in a rather cold voice before turning her attention back to Leliana.

"Leliana, I would like a moment of your time. I have… news to share with you."

_Bad news_. _Something has happened to Nyx. _

Leliana was sure of it. Maybe it was something about the way Wynne hesitated. Maybe it was a glimpse of pity she saw in the elder woman's face. Leliana felt a knot form in her gut; her legs felt soft and her head swam a little as she accompanied the old enchanter to a quiet spot, a short distance from the others' raucous conversation.

_Pity_. It was definitely pity on Wynne's face as she opened her mouth, but instead of spitting out her news, the one that would shatter Leliana's hope, the dear old bat asked a _question_.

"Did you know where Nyx went when she left Denerim?" Wynne asked softly. The look of incomprehension on the bard's face was answer enough, and the old enchanter looked oddly embarrassed. "She didn't tell you of her… intention?"

"What _intention_? Where is she? Has something happened to her?" Leliana's voice came out shrill in her own ears. She could hear her own heart, its beat steadily increasing, and she thought: _Maker help me, but_ _if she doesn't spit it out right now, I am going to hurt her._

"I see. Oh, Maker, Leliana… I do not know how to express…" Finding Wynne at a loss for words was a rare occurrence; a fact that the Warden had oftentimes bemoaned. Leliana waited, her heart pummeling her ribcage while the older woman fussed with her hands, took a deep breath and finally resumed speaking.

"Three days ago, Nyx went back to the Circle of Magi. She was… very agitated. She spent a great deal of time talking with Irving; I do not know the contents of their discussions. I just know that she asked to be subjected to the Rite of Tranquility, and after much discussion, Irving accepted. She was… _turned_, that very evening. I am so, so sorry, Leliana. I thought she had told you…"

"The Rite of Tranquility?" The name had a familiar ring, but Leliana could not seem to remember. Something that shifty blood mage had said; the one in Castle Redcliffe's prison. And something else, something Nyx had feared and hated. Leliana could not think clearly through the thunder of blood in her ears.

"The Rite," Wynne explained with sorrow in her eyes, "through which a mage is cut off from the Fade and…"

Leliana did not hear the old woman's voice any more. She remembered now. The Tranquil. They had met one in the besieged Tower; she had been _appalled_ at the Circle's treatment of the man. The Tranquil: cold, empty shells that walked and breathed like living men, only they were _dead_ inside. There had to be a mistake. Maybe she didn't hear right? She tried to imagine Nyx as a walking cadaver, with empty eyes and that stupid, bovine expression, but it just wasn't right. _Dead inside; _those words just couldn't apply to her Warden. All Leliana could conjure up were images of a living, loving, quick-tempered, reckless elf.

"No." she murmured, shaking her head. Nyx would never… And then she heard Zevran's voice in her head; the meaning behind the words hideously clear now. _She said that she left because she was dangerous, whatever that means; and also that she held her promise not to let you come to harm_.

And she knew it was all true. Tears swelled in her eyes, and a moan in her throat, and she fell to her knees, crying and clutching Wynne's red linen robes.

* * *

Cullen stirred, his sleep slightly disturbed by a soft, unfamiliar sound. But like so many dreamers on that night, his spirit trod strange paths in the Fade, trails of fear and shadow, and he did not wake, not even when the sound resumed, a little stronger and faster.

Had he, or Ser Jehan, been awake to watch their charge, they might have been surprised by the expression on the sleeping Tranquil that lay, hands and feet bound, by the campfire's dying embers. They would certainly have wondered at the silent sobs that, for a few minutes, shook the elf's tiny frame. But no one was watching the sorceress on that quiet night.

No one saw Leliana's tears on Nyx's face.

* * *

The bard stood calm and collected before the ruined gates as dawn painted the Eastern sky white. In her mind's eye, the now-peaceful scene was superimposed with the memories of the Battle of Denerim, recollections of blood, fire and fear.

Leliana did not fear now. Her greatest fears and hopes were all but gone, spirited away with a crazy elf who had done the unthinkable in her name. Now she was going to chase after them and see how much she could piece back together.

She thought of those she left behind.

Of Runt, his leg mutilated, but his courage intact. Nyx's mabari would soon sail with Sten for Seheron, to sire a breed of war hounds worthy of the Qunari.

Of Oghren, who hoped to join the Grey Wardens – maybe to give a sense to his drunken, drifting life? Leliana suspected that it would take more than a sip of darkspawn blood to mend whatever was broken in the dwarf.

Of Jack, whose remains were never identified. Like so many heroes of the last battle, his bones would rest under some monument, erected so that generations to come would not discount the darkspawn as old fishwives' tale. Leliana knew they would, in the end. People always forgot. The monument would crumble; Leliana's ballads would be forgotten, but the darkspawn? _They_ would return. Few things endured as well as evil.

Of Zevran. Leliana knew he would come if she asked him to, but she felt that she had no right to ask anything more of him. She was chasing after a ghost of hope, but danger was real enough. Now that the Antivan had his freedom and enough money to enjoy it, it would not be fair to let him risk everything with her.

_An old man, a dwarf, an elf and a dog_. That was quite a start for a ballad, she thought with a sad little smile. This time she had made sure to stash quills and paper in her saddle bag. Wynne gave her a puzzled look and Leliana nodded, jumping lightly onto horseback and stirring her mount away from the ruined wall, away from everything that happened in Denerim. She did not look back.

She was never to see Denerim again.

The roads around the capital were flat and well-maintained, and they set their horses to a swift trot, drifting slowly through the desolate countryside. The fields had not been harvested, their owners killed or driven away by the darkspawn; the rotting harvest mingled with the morning mists, spoiled ears of wheat dripping sadly onto the soggy earth. Leliana sighed heavily; it was obvious that the kingdom's difficulties were not over. A failed harvest here in Ferelden's farming heartland would mean hunger and disease throughout the autumn, and a murderous winter. Some would say it was the Maker's will. Leliana hoped they were wrong.

Wynne seemed to partake in her somber mood, clutching her heavy velvet cloak and staring blankly at the road ahead. Leliana had forgiven her betrayal against Nyx; the old enchanter had only sought to do the right thing when she had suggested referring the sorceress to Chantry authorities.

Now it seemed that the Warden herself had vindicated Wynne.

"Tell me again about the Rite, Wynne." Leliana did not really want to know. But information was power, and she needed every bit of information she could gather about Nyx and the mysterious Templars who had taken her away. Wynne shook her head sadly.

"I do not know much about the Rite. Only the Circle's First Enchanters are privy to that knowledge, and they swear an oath to keep it all secret. You already know that it permanently severs a mage's connection to the Fade. It also… interferes with their emotions, dulling all feelings. A Formari feels no fear, no anger, no love either, and very little physical pain or pleasure. They say it is a quiet, mostly satisfying existence."

"So Nyx is _happier _now?" Leliana snapped.

"I would not say that. She is not unhappy, however. I… understand that this is not much comfort to you."

"No. No it is not. Thanks for trying anyway," she said sullenly.

"Leliana, please believe me when I say that I share in your loss. We all do. It was very difficult, watching one so full of life and hope undergo the Rite. It broke Irving's heart; I don't think he will ever be his old self again. But you have to wonder… Maybe it is for the best? Turning into an abomination is a terrible thing, Leliana. You can hardly imagine what she must have been through…"

"CAN YOU?" Leliana's yell scared a couple of ravens from their perch by the side of the road; a black feather whirled by her shoulder, falling to the road in a slow spiral. Wynne averted her eyes from the bard's flushed features.

"I… no, not really. But I lost many students that way, and many dear friends."

"She is _not_ lost. Why is it that everyone is so eager to give up on her?" Leliana's horse flinched at the anger in her voice, and she patted the animal's mane reassuringly. It was a good beast, but no warhorse.

"Everyone was grateful when she stopped the Blight", she continued in a low, bitter voice. "But now that it is over, no one gives a damn about her. We all used her, and now we should let her… let her… Maker, I don't even know what those blasted Templars _want_ with her!"

Wynne drove her horse closer and leaned towards the sullen bard, patting her arm gently in a way that reminded her of Lady Cecile. Funny, she thought, how grandmotherly mannerisms seemed to transcend borders and social strata.

"You knew she was a Grey Warden", Wynne reminded her in a soft, almost timid voice. "This has been the fate of Grey Wardens ever since the First Blight: they give their lives so that others might find happiness and prosperity, but they hardly get to enjoy either. Maybe you can take comfort in the knowledge that she was happy when she was around you, far happier than she ever was, in the Circle or otherwise. Anybody could see that, although it took _her_ a long time to realize it."

Leliana chuckled softly. "I remember your noticing, yes. You even tried to talk her out of it. I thought she was going to bite your head off."

"She nearly did, too; only my thick old skull saved me. I was wrong, of course. I see it now: she could never have gone this far without you. You gave her strength, and perhaps you saved her from herself."

Leliana shook her head, biting her lip slightly.

"Or perhaps I was the doom of her, Wynne. That… _thing_ she tried to stave off… I think she summoned it to save me…"

It was strange, but in spite of their past differences, Leliana still trusted Wynne more than she had trusted any of her old travel companions, save the Warden. It was difficult to put the feeling into words; she just _knew_ that Wynne was a fundamentally benevolent person. Leliana felt the older woman's grip on her shoulder tighten a little, and she realized that she was crying. _Again_, she thought. _I seem to do an awful lot of this lately_. _Ugh_.

"I think you are missing the point, child." Wynne's aged eyes seemed to glow faintly under her brow, and Leliana thought she felt something radiate through her hand and into her shoulder; something like warm, soothing light. "These things do not just _happen_. Nyx was fated to meet with the… entity, whatever it is; what _you_ did was help her deal with it."

Leliana smiled through the tears. "Thanks. You always had a way to make me feel better. It's too bad it didn't work on Nyx."

Wynne sighed and straightened up on horseback, wincing a little as her back gave out a distinctly audible creak.

"We all work different kinds of magic; mine hardly ever worked on young, gifted mages. Ooh, this damp weather will be the death of me…"

* * *

_A.N. And so we leave Denerim... It felt a little odd writing a whole chapter without any murder or dismemberment. Hope you'll enjoy it anyway._


	8. Chapter 8: The righteous

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**The righteous**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Nyx awoke to the quiet melody of the Chant of Light.

Her Templar escort had been joined in their morning devotions by merchants from a passing caravan, happy to find priests of sorts on the long, wild trail. Now the fervent voices of a half-dozen men and women filled the burnt-out shell of a farm where the Templars had set up camp.

Had Nyx been able to appreciate music, she might have been moved by the simple harmony. But Nyx had never cared much for the Chant, and Tranquil ears appreciated music like genlocks enjoyed floral arrangement. So she just lay on the floor, stretching her limbs in an attempt to restore blood flow to her bound hand and feet, and waited patiently until her escort was finished singing to signal that she was awake, and hungry to boot.

From the way Cullen's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he heard her voice, Nyx gathered that her waking up was somewhat unexpected. The Templar fumbled with her bonds nervously, obviously concerned that any contact with her flesh might gravely compromise his salvation. The merchants eyed her with almost equal concern, until Ser Jehan assured them in his heavily accented Fereldan that she was quite harmless, and would never dream of putting a hex on anybody while Templars were around. The traders seemed to take his word for it, but kept throwing her nervous looks every time she stirred, which was not all that much.

Nyx munched slowly on her ration of beef jerky – Cullen's eyes followed every move of her hand to her mouth like a greedy poodle's. She had nothing much to do, so she listened to the conversation as the merchants shared some clear tea with the Templars. Their generosity did not extend to maleficarum.

It turned out that the merchants were scared out of their wits. Something had been disturbing their dreams with alarming regularity, and the close companionship of the road had led them to confide to each other, heightening their fears tenfold when they discovered the troubling similarities between their nightmares. Nyx noticed that, while Cullen seemed rather inclined to dismiss the good folks' fears as superstitious rambling, Ser Jehan listened intently, a somber expression on his hawkish features. The merchants attributed their trouble to darkspawn, however, and Jehan did nothing to encourage or dissipate that belief, merely nodding and offering words of encouragement.

These were dark times, but the Maker would look after his own, Jehan concluded reassuringly. Had there been actual darkspawn sightings on the Highway? Some of the merchants opined that there were, others contended that there weren't, but no one had seen the darkspawn with their own eyes, and the conversation soon shifted to the respective merits of Orlesian and Fereldan wool.

After a while the merchants headed back to their mules by the Highway, handing out alms to the Templars and thanking them profusely for their spiritual comfort. Jehan promised good-naturedly to light a few candles in Val Royaux's Cathedral for their souls, and the ruins gradually returned to their former quiet as the caravan's chatter faded into the distance. Jehan crouched in front of Nyx, a puzzled look in his dark eyes.

"How are you feeling, mage?"

"Functional," Nyx droned.

"Any idea why you went into a seizure every time we tried to move you West?" There was a dangerous light in the man's eyes, a look Nyx had learnt to associate with wolves, Templars and other predators. Telling the truth would be most unwise.

"I do not know," she lied, her silver eyes as placid as dead pools of water. "If I was to guess, I would say that my organism reacts badly to the change in altitude. I have not had much time to learn about Formari physiology but…"

"All right, all right, I get it! Maker!" Jehan groaned, "Why is it they don't take off your tongues too? Never mind, don't answer _that_!"

"She's lying," Cullen offered. He was packing the trio's bedrolls, but strived to keep his eyes on the mage all the time, which caused him to fumble around like a drunk.

"Oh? Why do you think a Tranquil would _lie_, kid?"

Cullen paused and thought for a moment, but failed to come up with a rational reason. Shrugging, he finished stuffing the last bedroll into a well-garnished saddle bag.

"Thought as much", Jehan grumbled. Then, under his breath: "_Con comme une baleine_…."

He departed to check on the horses, leaving Nyx standing dumbfounded in the ruins, busily pondering the chances of whales being as dumb as Cullen. She had not yet reached a conclusion – marine mammals were supposed to have big brains, she was pretty sure of that, and Cullen really was _something_- when Jehan's voice called for her to get on his horse.

* * *

Leliana saw the pursuer long before he reached them.

It was already late into the afternoon when she looked over her back to for a routine check and saw him, a small, dark spot moving very fast in and out of the shadows of the Imperial Highway's stone arches. They had passed very few travelers once they had reached this portion of the Highway; most of the trade routes ran along the coast, further North between the ports of Highever and Amaranthine. Frowning, Leliana reflected that this very reason made this smooth, all but deserted section of the Highway a rather decent spot for an ambush… or an all-out assault.

Leliana reached for her bow, a no-frill, sturdy Fereldan military weapon which she had acquired from a salvage stall in the rubble along Denerim's main street. The bow was not nearly as formidable as Marjolaine's, but part of her was glad that the master bard's weapon was lost forever. Too many ghosts were attached to that bow.

Wynne followed her movement, her eyes widening in a silent question.

"Rider coming in behind us. It looks like he is alone, so this is probably nothing to worry about. Still," Leliana said with a little nervous laugh, "it is better to be safe than sorry, yes? We should move off the road and see what happens."

Wynne nodded, content for the moment to follow the bard's lead. Leliana knew that for all the adventures in her long life, Wynne had never completely gotten around to understanding simple tactics, such as the use of terrain or formation. Maybe, she reflected with a little smile, this was a result of having too much power at your fingertips. Most mages Leliana had been around seemed uncannily confident in their own power, often to the extent of being careless. _All_ the mages Leliana had faced in battle had quickly come to regret it.

Following Leliana's lead, they climbed a small hill, a short way from the road. They didn't wait for long before the sound of hooves on the Highway pavement was heard, rushing in from the East, then slowing down, hesitating slightly, stopping in the shadow of a ruined column. Leliana took a deep breath and slowly drew her bow, feeling the muscles in her back tighten, enjoying the thrill of the last seconds of calm before the battle. A short, armored figured slowly emerged from behind the column, hands held high in mock surrender.

"Make sure you shoot above the waist, yes? Or the courtesans of Antiva will curse your name for three generations."

Leliana chuckled and released the arrow; the projectile whistled sharply and embedded itself into the dirt by the newcomer's foot. Zevran picked it up and made a show of studying it.

"No love note attached? Orlesian romance is not what it used to be."

Laughing softly, Leliana spurred her mount downhill, bringing it to a stop before the grinning elf.

"I suppose you have business in Orlais, _beau gosse_?"

"I have recently retired. But now that I am a rich man, I wish to learn by myself why the brothels in Val Royeaux are the envy of all Thedas. It runs in the family, so to speak. So we will travel together, yes? Marvelous! And Wynne! Did anyone ever tell you that you _ride_ like a goddess…?"

The old enchanter threw Zevran a reproving look, which only seemed to increase the assassin's mirth.

* * *

It was a strange, sickening sensation. Throughout the day, Nyx would feel the bond wax and wane, the drain on her lifeforce becoming stronger when the Templars gained ground on their pursuer, and easing for a while whenever they paused for rest or food. Rolling slightly with the horses' movement, Nyx had to periodically fight the waves of nausea that appeared to coincide with the strongest pulls on her energy. She rode in front of Ser Jehan, and she had gotten the knack of leaning sideways to throw up, sparing the Templar and his horse a lot of cleaning.

The bond told her that the bard was coming for her; the most logical explanation was that word had reached her from the Tower. This meant the failure of her attempt to spare Leliana the knowledge of her… newfound peace. Nyx understood, on a purely abstract level, that the bard would probably be very upset, as she would have been, before… Strange pain, both searing and glacial, flashed behind her forehead, and she gave up the thought.

On the other hand, she thought, Leliana's pursuit was intrinsically a good thing. Even though that the Templars appeared to need her alive, their patience had limits. Had they tried to forcefully move Nyx during her unconscious spells, the bond would probably have sapped her life force faster than she could regenerate it. Nyx knew they would have attempted it in the end, and that would have meant the ultimate ruin of all her efforts. Leliana would not survive her; the instant the sorceress' heart stopped beating, so would the bard's.

All in all, it was a rather complicated situation: Leliana would be all right as long as she kept following from a distance, but Nyx entertained little illusion as to the welcome the bard would receive from the Templars, should she finally catch up with them and try something heroic.

Nyx briefly contemplated trying to give her captors the slip. The odds appeared overwhelmingly stacked against her: she was unarmed and physically weakened, and had no hope to access her magic. To make things worse, she knew that she was completely useless in the wilderness, having spent most of her life confined in the Tower of Magi. In the best of cases she would walk around in circles and get caught; in the worst case she would get lost utterly and starve or be eaten by wolves. Both options were… an absolute waste of her time and energy, and that was assuming that she could even escape the Templars' vigilance. From the corner of her eye she saw Cullen maneuver his horse so that he could get a clear view of her hands. She could not remember seeing the man shut his eyes in days.

Satisfied that escape was not an option at the moment, Nyx absorbed herself in the contemplation of her surroundings, naming to herself the various trees and plants she remembered from her travels. The temperature was growing markedly lower as the trio neared Gherlen's Pass, the mountains on both sides rising high and forbidding; lowlands vegetation gave way to pines and dark, densely packed firs. The air tickled her elven nose with the promise of coming snow.

If Nyx remembered correctly, the trio would reach the crossroads to Orzammar a little further down the Highway. She wondered how much Lyrium the Templars carried with them; if they were of the addict sort. Should they try to refill their favorite poison at the gates of the Dwarven city-state, Nyx might be able to leverage her local connections and have them thrown into jail or executed. That is, if she managed to convince King Bhelen that acting so was in his best interests. She evaluated the odds of that at less than one in three; she _had_ been known to succeed against far worse odds.

"Messire Jehan?"

"Oui?" the Templar groaned; uncommunicative as the man was, he was still a stranger in a strange land, and her interest in his native language pleased him. She intended to make the best of it, linguistically and otherwise.

"On peut parler Orlaisien?"

The conversation went on, Nyx catching up quickly to the Northern language's inflections and replying in her broken, bookish Orlesian. Studying was rewarding in a quiet fashion, but more importantly, she could deliver some messages…

"Do you know why Cullen dislikes me?"

She hesitated on the choice of words. Jehan threw a quick glance at his novice, who clearly didn't appreciate being left out of the conversation. As Nyx had expected, Jehan's curiosity turned out stronger than his desire to be nice to the boy, if there _had_ ever been such a thing.

"Tell me what you know then, mage. Just mind your words. Slandering a Brother won't help your case in Val Royeaux."

"I do not wish to slander. But you should know the truth, lest complications arise."

"Yeah, yeah, spit it out already."

"Templar Cullen has not always loathed me. Over a few months, he propositioned me for sexual intercourse eight times." One of the benefits of a clockwork memory: with very little effort, Nyx could probably recall the exact day and hour of each one of Cullen's indiscretions; every word, every attempted touch. Jehan looked indifferent, but she knew that the little cogs in his mind were spinning.

"That would have been a problem for the local K.C.," the older Templar said gruffly, "why do you think you need to tell _me_?"

"Because Cullen is mentally unsound and might try to assault me. I would prefer to remain undamaged," she said in her even, unconcerned tone.

"_Everything all right?"_ Cullen's shrill interruption came with perfect timing. The boy just couldn't stand being left out of the conversation; he literally exuded fear and suspicion, small beads of sweat glinting on the sides of his nose in spite of the chilly temperature. Nyx realized that he was almost as scared of the older Templar as he was of her. Had she been able to feel pity, she might have pitied him. Then again, had she been able to _feel_, she would probably just have hexed the living lights out of both Templars and called it a day.

She spent the next couple of hours studying the Highway's stone pavement and broken structures; the color and arrangement of stones said a lot about both the geological composition of the surrounding mountains and the enslaved people who had built the road. Nyx was no expert at geology, but Tevinter history had once fascinated her, mainly because it was inextricably intertwined with the few existing records of elven lore. Now that her mind was free of emotional clutter, she found that she could capture and analyze minute differences in architecture over the miles of their long, monotonous ride. It was simply impossible to be bored when surrounded by so much detail.

Something ripped through her back and chest; Nyx doubled over in pain, whimpering softly, her hands groping blindly to find the wound. There was _no_ wound, only perfectly healthy flesh under the brown Circle robes; no wound and only that incredibly sharp pain. Alien, unexplainable panic swept through her mind. Jehan shouted something in her ear, but she couldn't make out his words through the haze of the Bond sucking her life away.

* * *

It was the second sniper who got her.

There were two baits, masquerading as a couple of bereaved travelers, plus three crossbowmen hidden on top of a relatively intact arch. The snipers wore loose, grey garments, with matching hoods and masks which made them hard to distinguish from the weathered stone they lay on. The ambush was simple and efficient, reminiscent in a sense of Zevran's missed attempt on the Warden, except that Zevran's archers had been poor shots and the snipers on the Highway were _good_.

The baits were waiting for them right outside of one of the Highway's few curbs, denying Leliana's companions any chance to spot them from a distance. Leliana saw them waving through the thin sheet of rain that coated everything. They clamored for help in anguished voices. They behaved just the way you would expect survivors of a bandit attack to; corpses of men and animals were strewn around them. It was all very well engineered, very plausible, but the couple's figures were just a little off. Either they were both half-dwarves, or they wore some serious armor under their plain woolen garments.

Wynne moved to charge to the rescue, and Leliana leaned over in a blink, snatching the reins from the old woman's hands lest she threw herself into the trap. The motion saved both of their lives; something grazed Leliana's scalp, whistling, and Wynne's horse collapsed, the steel head of a crossbow bolt barely emerging above the animal's brow. The old enchanter hit the pavement with a spine-chilling crack, and Leliana jumped to her side, bow in hand. Wynne whimpered like a child as the bard dragged her to the relative shelter of a fallen column. There was no telling how many bones the old girl had broken, but by the look of things Leliana could not count on much healing in this fight.

On the other side of the Highway, she caught a glimpse of Zevran, weaving in and out of cover as he fired his short bow on the approaching melee fighters. How the Antivan had escaped the shot that was meant to end his colorful career, Leliana would never know; she suspected that the Maker had a thing for promiscuous assassins. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself a few seconds to collect her bearings, trying to form a mental picture of the battlefield. Two, maybe three crossbowmen in an elevated position... Those were the real players; the armored fighters were only here to flush out the quarry. Hopefully, Zevran's barrage of arrows would keep everyone nice and busy.

_All right, battle it is then…_

Leliana bolted from behind the fallen column, her bow held loosely before her. She slipped into the shadow of the next pillar before the hidden crossbowmen could adjust their shots; bolts hit the pavement behind her, and she popped up from cover in a fluid motion while the snipers fumbled to reload. Deep breath, relaxed muscles, light on her feet; the arrow flew from her hand and she _knew_ she had hit the mark long before the shot punched through the sniper's skull. She was back safely into cover before the man's weapon clattered on the floor.

_Two more to go… _

A yell of pain told Leliana that Zevran's arrows had finally found a chink in one of the melee fighters' armor; the other one – the "bereaved' woman– crashed forward desperately, throwing the elf to the ground with her shield. _Brave, but stupid_. The woman had managed to simultaneously block her comrades' line of sight and leave her left flank wide open to the bard's arrows. She didn't wear a helmet. Leliana dispatched her quickly and mercifully, even as Zevran rolled away to safety, smirking. She shared in his exultation. They had weathered the worst; now _they_ had the upper hand, and the fight would end on their terms.

They progressed quickly from cover to cover, alternatively moving forward and shooting at the snipers' position, effectively pinning down their marks thanks to their bows' superior rate of fire. Leliana hoped that the assassins would fall back on melee weapons in the end; she _itched_ to finish this up close and personal.

Flanking the mark now; Leliana moved like a ghost, sliding from shadow to shadow, until she got a clear shot at the snipers' position. The man's grey hood and cloak hardly stood out against the rainy sky, but she saw him all right, fumbling to cock his crossbow as Zevran taunted him. Leliana frowned. There ought to be _two_ of them…

A faint sound behind her, the click of a crossbow being cocked. Leliana threw herself to the ground, trying desperately to roll into cover, certain that she would not succeed. Her mind registered the clang, and then the impact sent her sprawling. Terrible pain rose, a straight line of fire extending through her right side, from somewhere below her shoulder blade right to the point where the bolt had ripped through the front of her armor. She could see the steel tip protruding from the ruin of her breast, razor-sharp and cross-shaped. Orlesian mercenaries used those a lot; they were called shredder heads, a rather self-explanatory name.

Things were not looking good, she thought as she tried to raise herself on an elbow. Her breath was quickly taking on a liquid, gurgling quality. Bright red bubbles popped out of her mouth as she gasped for air, and she realized that she was about to drown in her own blood. _If only Wynne could get here in time._ Sturdy leather boots entered her field of vision; Leliana heard the sound of a blade being drawn, and realized that healing was not her primary concern here. Somewhere, she heard the song of Zevran's bow, followed by a muffled cry of pain. She knew he would be too late to help.

"_The righteous stand before the darkness…"_

Leliana couldn't believe she heard those words. She couldn't believe that the… bastard… thought _he_ was the righteous, and _she _was the darkness, and he had a right to do what he was about to do. _She_ ought to be the one saying those words. Leliana had faced the darkness; darkspawn and horrors that would freeze the Maker-damned assassin's blood in his veins. This was not _right_.

Something rose inside Leliana, something powerful, summoned by her pain and feeding on her anger. The presence was terrifying and soothing, alien and dearly loved; it carried with it a promise of terrible darkness, yet its power enveloped her as tenderly as a mother's arms. The pain receded as the crossbow bolt fizzled away like an icicle in a hot pan. Her torn flesh knitted together, impossibly fast; glorious, incandescent darkness spread through her veins, along with a _rage _that was not of this world.

"_Nyx?_" she blurted incredulously. The leather boots retreated one step as the man recoiled from the dark, billowing aura that surged from her, swarming around the fallen bard like a breeding ball of snakes. Leliana thought she heard the faint echo of a familiar voice, whispering somewhere deep in her chest.

"_Hurry up, my bard. We can't keep this up all day."_

The dim light took on an odd, reddish tinge and Leliana jumped to her feet, moving catlike and impossibly fast towards the cringing mark. The man's short sword came up, far too slow; she swatted his wrist away like an insect, latching onto his upper arm in the same movement. Nyx's anger flowed through her and her palm shot up and forward, catching the assassin under the jaw. She felt the teeth pop under the impact, like the crackle of thin ice underfoot in Orlais' streets; then came the solemn drum strokes of vertebrae, thundering in quick succession as the man's head shot backwards at an absurd angle. For a maddening second she mused that the man's death was music, a macabre, but pleasant tune; then the sorceress' presence melted away and Leliana let go of the corpse, disgusted.

She was victorious, and she felt _dirty_.

Zevran's head emerged warily from behind a pillar. The elf quickly took stock of the situation –the bard being moody after a kill was nothing new - and darted off to find Wynne. Soon the old enchanter's voice rose from further down the road, energetically assuring the Antivan that she would _not_ take off her robes, thank you very much, nor trust him with any kind of medical examination.

Leliana crouched by the fallen assassin's body, foraging quickly through the man's clothing; she went as far as to strip the cooling corpse, but was not surprised to find no identifying mark of any sort. The man bore a lot of old scars, marking him as some kind of veteran; more recent, painful-looking scars covered his upper arms where tattoos had been burned off. She tried not to look at the dead face, with its glassy eyes and collapsed jaw.

When she was finished with her examination, all that she had in hand was a small flask of elfroot unguent, a handful of coins, and a small, round medallion bearing the mark of Andraste, not unlike the one she wore. Leliana's anger had disappeared when the sorceress' power waned, and she hoped that the man had found peace. She hesitated for a second and placed the medallion in the man's hand, but the corpse's fingers would not quite close on it. The medallion seemed to blink at her mockingly, like a silver eye set in dead flesh.

Shuddering despite her thick travel cape, Leliana hurried away from the corpse, leaving it to the loving care of rats and ravens.


	9. Chapter 9: Complications

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Complications**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and all related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

"Once again, mage, what was _that_?"

Ser Jehan reeked of sweat, hot steel and the rotting tooth that had been tormenting him for days. This didn't bother Nyx overmuch; _she_ smelled of damp wool, vomit and ill-washed smallclothes. Such were the joys of slow travel through wild, empty lands. But there was another smell on Jehan that caused the elf to weigh her answer very carefully as he towered over her on the roadside.

He smelled of violence.

"I had a fit of pain in my right side. The symptoms are not consistent with a heart attack; I do not know…"

Jehan's ungloved hand cut short her explanation as he clutched her face, forcing her jaw open in a way that should have been painful. It wasn't.

"Keep your answers short, maleficar. Did your symptoms involve _magic_?"

Nyx waited patiently for the Templar to release her before she replied, in a rather indistinct voice– she found that her jaw muscles didn't work very well after that little demonstration of authority.

"I am Tranquil. I cannot work magic."

"Really? Because my nose tickled when you were squirming in the saddle. I have a good nose for magic." The stench of the rotten tooth was overpowering; the man ought to have it removed quickly. The pain probably didn't help his patience.

"You speak of the impossible. I am Tranquil," Nyx droned patiently. Templars were usually not very bright. Jehan's features set in an obstinate frown.

"I have a way to know. You won't like it. Brother Cullen?"

The novice snapped to attention; he had been watching the interrogation with something like rapture. He smiled, exhibiting rows of perfectly healthy, white teeth. His hand kept fiddling with his dagger's hilt.

"Ser?"

"Hold the mage down for me. I need to check something."

Cullen rushed to oblige with the enthusiasm of a dog that has been promised a treat. On Jehan's instructions, he pushed the elf to her knees and held her firmly; Nyx could feel him tremble slightly at the touch. Jehan looked at her calmly.

"Now believe it or not, I don't like this one bit. But I need to be sure that you are what you claim to be." He paused a few seconds, thinking. The left side, with its peculiar scarring, may not serve his purpose. He took Nyx's right hand in his armored left hand; his right hand was pressed lightly on the side of the elf's neck, on the pulsing artery.

It didn't hurt, not really. Two broken fingers later, Jehan relaxed his hold on her neck, cursing softly in Orlesian. Nyx knew that her pulse had hardly increased at all. Cullen kept holding onto her, his breath quick and shallow. His scent was very odd, as was the tension she felt in his body.

"It's all right, kid, release her. Maker! I didn't think she was the real thing." Cullen let go, reluctantly, while Jehan fumbled into his saddle bags and retrieved bandages and little flasks of unguents. The older Templar helped her bandage her fingers, using short sticks for splints.

"For what it's worth, I am sorry, mage," he said gruffly in Orlesian.

"It's all right. I felt no pain; I am…"

"Tranquil, yeah, I know…"

Finally, the Templar had learned his lesson. Nyx looked at her bandaged hand with the satisfaction of a job well done.

* * *

"So mages are not allowed to have children?"

Wynne sighed. Discussing these matters with outsiders was always _draining_. It seemed that everybody and their cousin agreed that mages needed to be tightly controlled and denied the most basic freedoms. Yet every time she would discuss the particulars of the Circle's rules, people would put on a show of sympathizing and rail against their inhumanity. Sometimes Wynne wished that the world would make up their mind, once and for all.

No, she thought as she peered at Leliana's indignant expression. It wasn't fair to lump her with the vast crowd of the ignoramus. The bard's concern was genuine, stemming from a true, heartfelt connection with a mage. Wynne was just becoming a bitter old woman, something she had sworn to avoid. She smiled tiredly.

"Nyx didn't tell you about it? I would have expected her to be quite vocal about her opinion of Circle rules."

Leliana blushed a little, and Wynne understood how she could capture hearts, even one as spiteful and egocentric as the apprenticed Nyx had been.

"She was. It's just… we never really talked about _children_…"

Wynne chuckled. "No, I suppose you didn't. Well… No, the Chantry doesn't allow mages to bear or raise children. It is meant to protect the child itself, you see, although there are some who believe it is also a long-term attempt at… _cleansing_ would be a nicer term than genocide, I suppose."

"And what do _you_ believe?"

"I…" Wynne couldn't believe how much it still hurt, after all these years. She sighed. "I suppose it is better to give the children a chance to live a normal life." The older she got, the more hollow these words sounded, a well-rehearsed lie she had been telling herself for decades. Leliana nodded, and Wynne wondered how much the redhead saw through her.

"So if Nyx… hum…"

Wynne took her time to answer, picking her words carefully.

"The Chantry or anybody else, for that matter, doesn't really have a say about how Grey Wardens live their lives. Nyx and her... _chosen one_... could probably raise a child without official interference. But she will never be able to conceive."

"I see. Thank you, Wynne," the bard concluded with a smile that was both radiant and a little sad. Wynne was grateful that the Antivan kept his trap shut.

Let the young ones dream, while they can.

* * *

Nyx awoke to the feeling of Cullen's blade, very cold and sharp on her throat. The night was dark, with hardly a hint of moonlight filtering through the low ceiling of snow clouds; yet her elven eyes could make out the strange light of the young Templar's gaze. Cullen touched his finger to his lips and quickly cut her bonds. Nyx pondered calling out to Ser Jehan, but something told her that the novice would not be shy about using his blade. Cullen motioned for her to rise and follow him; she _felt_ something then, her stomach knotting oddly.

_So I can feel fear after all. How peculiar. _

Nyx wondered how well the human could see in the dark; he certainly moved around clumsily. He made quite a racket as he goaded her away from the Templar's camp and up a wooded slope, but Ser Jehan kept snoring loudly. Nyx remembered seeing him drink from a little flask he carried in his coat pocket; she suspected that he had taken an opiate to soothe his raging toothache.

They stumbled for a while in the trees' darkness; even Nyx's elven eyes could not see much beyond her own feet, and Cullen had latched onto her shoulder like a blind man. Jehan's snoring faded into the distance, hushed by the night wind. Nyx remembered her encounter with a Wolf priest by the Brecilian Forest; she wondered if there were ancient stone altars in the Frostback Mountains. This was a wild, lonely place, bound to appeal to mad cultists and deranged Chantry boys. The knot in Nyx's stomach grew almost painful.

Maybe the Templar just wanted to get his rocks off. Nyx had a very theoretical knowledge of the act, scraped together from books about human anatomy and animal reproduction. Maybe if she pretended to go along with the moves, he might let go of the dagger. He was not wearing his white-lacquered armor tonight. She would not need much strength to do what was necessary.

Nnyx wondered if she could find her way back to the horses. If she managed to kill Cullen, and to sneak her way to the horses, then she would be able to leave Ser Jehan stranded in the mountains, ideally without food, days from the closest Dwarven settlement. A week or more from the closest Chantry. That would be enough time to find Leliana.

_And then what?_

Nyx reflected on the events of the day. The Bond would be stronger in the Bard's presence; she wondered if she could, maybe… No, that would not do. She had no way to ensure that Fen'Harel would not seek her through the Bond. A complicated situation...

She heard Cullen mutter to himself; removed from his superiors' scrutiny, the Templar seemed to revert to the agitated state she had found him in during the Circle massacre. His scent was _wrong_, as though some unseen sickness seeped through his pores. Nyx's fear grew more urgent with each step, twisting in her gut like a small, wild creature. She had believed herself beyond fear, wrapped safely in a cocoon of numbness; now her body was taking its revenge, despite and against the mutilation she had inflicted on it.

That feeling… something was wrong. Nyx quickly browsed through her memories. She remembered fear...

This was _not_ fear.

Nyx froze in her tracks; Cullen bumped into her, and she would have fallen if he had not held onto her shoulder, his fingers burying deep into the muscle. The point of a dagger tickled her lower back.

"We stop when I say we stop, maleficar. Don't be too eager."

Nyx slowly moved her head left and right. How many were there? Not a lot, she reckoned, but still too many. They were closing in on her, like moths drawn to a flame. She tried to put some urgency in her voice, but her tone came out miserably flat.

"We must turn back. We are in danger."

Cullen laughed, a low, rambling sound that was quite unlike the confused boy in the Tower.

"Yeah, right! Danger… Let me guess… The woods are filled with abominations?"

He gripped her by the throat, lifting her off her feet easily with one hand. His broad, bright grin reminded her of a mabari's snarl before the bite.

"I have seen it today, little elf. You have lost your power. You can't hurt me any more, no…"

White dots danced before Nyx's eyes, and through it all she felt _them_ coming. She kicked feebly; the Templar's body may as well have been made of bronze. She made a big effort to speak.

"_Dark_…" The big hand crushed the word in her throat. It was too late anyway.

_Crack_. _The sound of a twig snapping under crude, armored boots; dangerously close_.

Cullen rolled his eyes in disgust, and then rearranged his features into his familiar, dumb-but-dutiful expression. Nyx's feet finally touched the ground, and she doubled over, wheezing, struggling to catch her breath.

"Brother Jehan," Cullen called out cheerfully, the dagger still clutched in his hand. "The maleficar tried to escape, but I caught her."

A low, gurgling sound came, that might have been a laugh. Cullen spun around as the darkspawn emerged from the dark woods. Cancerous skin glistened vaguely in the gloom; toothy maws drooled in anticipation. They did not carry bows; several of them were not even armed, mad beasts reverting to a feral state after the fall of their god. There was a short, unreal silence as the Templar faced his foes, the dagger held high in his right hand, his lips silently forming the first verses of a canticle. Then Cullen charged with a resounding battle cry, and the darkspawn answered in a chorus of infernal grunts and hisses.

Nyx did not stay to watch the battle; as far as she was concerned both sides were equally welcome to die. As soon as Cullen made his move, she bolted in the opposite direction, rushing blindly between the black, half-glimpsed forms of the trees. She heard the trample of heavy feet behind her and she ran faster, dead branches clawing at her face and heavy, cumbersome robes. She needed to find her way back to camp. She may still be able to take advantage of the commotion and steal a horse.

They crashed after her in the woods; the squat, grunting offspring of violated dwarves. They were fast on their short legs, and their thick hides felt no more pain from the thorns and the flogging underbrush than her numb skin. Nyx left a trail of tainted blood as she went, and the creatures' infernal urge only rose at the scent. All Nyx could do was run downhill, screaming for help in an absurdly dispassionate voice. It would be best if the Templar would stir from his opium dreams _and_ be intelligent enough to call to her.

She saw the light filtering through the trees, white and bright, as though a star had fallen into the forest. The darkspawn saw it too, and cursed it with inarticulate groans.

They ran faster.

As Nyx crashed forward through the underbrush the light grew brighter, turning the forest into a surreal world of black, ragged shadows and blinding nothingness. She had to cover her eyes with a hand as she ran; the darkspawn howled in dismay, stumbling about as blindly as she did.

They ran harder.

The muscles in Nyx's legs started cramping; acid refluxes overflowed her throat, her lungs threatened to shut down. She heard Jehan bellow a Templar battle cry, his voice strangely deformed. Forty yards at most.

They ran closer…

Nyx stumbled into the open, sensing rather than seeing the man who stood at the center of the light. It would be preferable if Ser Jehan was as good with a sword as he was at being a beacon, because she knew that whatever this Templar trick was, darkspawn were not mages. They would not give up even if the very eyes were seared off their skulls. Nyx had planned to run for the horses and leave the Templar to his fate, but her legs betrayed her; all she could do was crawl at Jehan's feet, and shake, and _stop_.

The Light Bearer raised his sword, a blade that was too long, too bright to be of this world. He crashed forward like a tower of steel, and Nyx's forces finally left her.

She was grateful that there were no dreams.

* * *

The vision starts.

Leliana understands that it is not a dream; at the very least, what she sees that night is not _her_ dream. There is nothing of the Fade's vagueness about the vision; it is both crystal clear and terribly remote.

The city sprawls before her eyes, its spires of gold and glass glistening under the rays of a sun that shines too bright. She wills the crystal bay to let her through, and she steps outside, into thin air and a two miles free fall. The bard whimpers in her sleep, but the _other _is not afraid.

She plummets towards the ground for what feels like an eternity; she laughs in delight and the wind roars in her ears like a hungry beast. Great wings of magic unfurl, and suddenly she is not falling any more; she _flies_, faster than any bird, weaving effortlessly between towers and buildings made of living rock and petrified light. She smiles as the small figures of elves on the ground interrupt their activities to bow respectfully; she acknowledges them with a light song in her wings. But today is not about receiving the worship that is her due.

She blazes away from the city, music trailing her like a comet's tail. Below her the cheerful din of the streets and canals gives way to the solemn silence of the great primal forest. Just like the elves are humbled by her presence, she is humbled by the majesty of her domain. Not just _her_ domain, she remembers with a smile. Today she hopes to meet her Lord and lover here, back from one of his long expeditions.

There are strange, alien voices in the forest. Her displeasure crackling through her wings like miniature thunder, she moves to investigate.


	10. Chapter 10: Dried beef

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Dried beef**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Things were not looking so good.

The battle had been over for a while when Nyx regained consciousness. The temperature had dropped sharply and snow was starting to cover the cooling corpses. Nyx had been lucky to wake up at all, she thought as she got to her feet; a little longer and she might have frozen to death. She tried to gather her tattered woolen robes about herself, but the cold seeped in through a hundred rips and gashes. Curious, how she was still sensitive to cold.

Nyx scanned her surroundings drowsily. The camp fire was dead, a simple dark spot on the ground. The tents had collapsed into snow-covered heaps. The remains of darkspawn were strewn about haphazardly, maybe a dozen of them; it was difficult to judge from the way the corpses were hacked into pieces. Nyx could hardly believe that the Templar had killed so many by himself. The scene basked in the eerie silence of abandoned battlefields.

_I need a horse and food. _

Nyx's legs felt very stiff, and she traipsed slowly towards the fallen tree where the Templars had tethered their mounts. It was difficult to see anything through the darkness and thickening snow. Nyx saw Ser Jehan's gauntlet emerge from one end of a small snow mound, moving feebly, and she staggered forward faster, giving up on food.

The horses were here… mostly. The darkspawn had had their fun.

Nyx stumbled back to the tents, shaking fiercely from the cold. She fumbled with the collapsed tent for a while before she found an opening, her fingers becoming increasingly stiff from the snow. She shoved herself into the opening and groped around blindly for her travel bag; it took her ages to find it and to extract herself from the tent again. She put on every piece of clothing she could find, and the shaking eased a little. Nyx went back for the tent masts; she needed to insulate herself from the snow.

A large, angular shadow crouched by her side; Nyx thought she recognized the blood-streaked armor as Ser Jehan's. His helmet was gone, and the man's face was but a mask of caked blood, a darker shade of black against the black night. The Templar helped her without a word, his big frame shaking as violently as she did. When it was done the man disappeared into the dark opening of the tent, leaving Nyx hesitant on the threshold.

Nyx searched for a blade in the snow, found one, a crude, leaf-shaped knife. She paused to think for a second. She could try to strike the Templar as he lay; she might be able to escape with her life if she retraced their steps to the crossroads and headed for Orzammar. Nyx slowly shook her head. It was quite likely that she would never make it, alone and on foot in the wilderness. She decided that she would take her chances.

Ser Jehan did _not_ take chances.

Nyx had hardly entered of the tent that the man was on her, searching for her hands in nearly total darkness. She lashed at him blindly, the blade scraping on hard, lacquered steel. But Nyx did not have a bard's training; she was unable to find the weak spots in the Templar's armor. A strong hand seized her wrist and wrestled the dagger away from her effortlessly. A big fist connected with her jaw, and she slipped into a deeper darkness.

* * *

"So, Zevran, I was wondering about the marvelous coincidence that put you on our path…"

Zevran smiled seductively at the old enchanter.

"Marvelous, isn't it? To find two such jewels of Southern womanhood on the deserted Highway. But doesn't the Chant of Light say: _thou shall not question your luck, lest the dices turn bad?_ No? Hum, actually I wonder if it _is_ the Chant…"

"I remember hearing _something_ like that", Leliana quipped, "but I don't think it was in a Chantry."

"Yes, well, Chantry, whorehouse, I get confused sometimes. It must be all this talk about sharing blessings."

"You're a bad man, Zevran Arainai," Leliana purred in a rather too sultry voice.

Wynne frowned. Maker's breath, were these two _flirting_? Wynne had never been entirely comfortable with the bard's choices. Unconventional sexuality notwithstanding – Wynne didn't really have anything against _that_, but it always made her a little uncomfortable, like that Orlesian mage who insisted on eating frogs he caught in Lake Calenhad - Wynne had for a long time viewed Nyx as more likely to _cause_ a Blight than to stop it. Now that the Warden had proved her wrong, but also turned into an asexual zombie, Wynne would have been happy to see the young bard show interest in a _normal_ person– say, a person who thought twice before killing people.

Instead, the misguided child was now flirting with _Zevran_. This was wrong on more levels than the old enchanter cared to think about. Wynne waited patiently for an opportunity to be alone with the Antivan; it happened in the form of Leliana drifting off the road for a while to "powder her nose", as young Orlesian women apparently called the fulfillment of various bodily functions. Wynne cleared her throat emphatically.

"Yes, dear?" The elf's brown eyes sparkled with mirth.

"Yes, as I was saying, it is a wonderful coincidence, isn't it? Not at all like you followed us all the way from Denerim…"

"Are you worried that I might… stab you in the back, my dear?"

"I am worried about your motivations", Wynne said flatly.

"Do elaborate. This conversation promises to be fun."

Wynne took a deep breath. "You are flirting with Leliana!" she snapped in her most accusatory voice.

"I am? Are you _jealous_?" The question was accompanied by a most _unbecoming_ wink, which sent a hint of a most _unbecoming_… warmth… onto the old enchanter's cheeks.

Wynne nearly stomped in frustration; she considered flinging a spell at the Antivan, but got a hold of herself in time. Wynne had rehearsed the whole thing mentally; she would be damned if she didn't get the elf to confess and renounce his predatory endeavors.

"Leliana is a sincere, guileless girl, and…"

Wynne had to interrupt herself as the preposterous elf exploded in laughter.

"I do not see how this is funny?"

"No, I don't expect you would", Zevran said, still smirking. "But let us talk seriously for a moment. Our Orlesian friend is more than able to fend for herself in matters of seduction."

"You are referring to her past…"

"No." Leliana's voice rose from behind Wynne; there was a hint of sadness in it, but also a trace of pride.

"No," she repeated, "he is talking about the present, Wynne. I am… not quite as vulnerable as you believe."

"What are you talking about, Leliana? Of course you…"

Something passed in the blue eyes, and the bard's expression shifted slightly; she now appeared… younger, perhaps, lost, and terribly sad. She reminded Wynne of many a student of hers, apprentices who had snapped under the pressure of Templar scrutiny. Wynne shook her head sadly and opened her arms to the wounded child, hugging her tightly. How could Zevran pretend not to see…?

Leliana whispered in her ear; her voice was the song of a blade sliding on ice.

"I know twenty-two ways to kill from such an embrace, Wynne. Four with my bare hands… I do not need to be protected."

Leliana stepped back and her expression changed again, her sunny, likable self taking over in a blink.

"… But I am grateful for your concern. Oh, look, a rainbow!" the bard chirped, jumping onto horseback before a flustered Wynne had a chance to open her mouth.

"Did you know that in ancient times, the Alamarri barbarians believed that the rainbow was a bridge to the abodes of the gods? There is even a song about it…"

Slowly, the companions rode towards the rainbow, and the bard's clear voice banned their fears, for a while.

* * *

A Tranquil's mind is a curious, clunky thing. Even as Nyx plodded forth, stumbling and slipping on the thin layer of frozen snow, she kept counting the milestones, studying the rocks, naming the trees. It was as if her brain was scared to be left idle, as if it needed to replace every frozen emotion with an incessant stream of mental junk.

Not that it was a bad thing to take her mind off the direness of the situation. Nyx and the surviving Templar were days from any human settlement –Jehan had made it clear that he would not trust the heathens in Orzammar. The sky had cleared up and the weather was turning _really_ cold, a biting Southeast wind that stung the sorceress through her multiple layers of robes and Cullen's salvaged greatcoat.

To further brighten her prospects, Nyx was now chained to a shambling, dying man who had thrown her shackles' key into a ravine.

Jehan paused to catch his breath and Nyx turned to study him.

The Templar was a sorry sight. It appeared that a number of those unarmed darkspawn Nyx had seen in the forest had taken to biting as their weapon of choice. While Jehan's armor had protected him quite well, his helm had become lost in the fight… Now Jehan walked around with a significant chunk of his scalp, and a good _third_ of his face, eaten away. The wounds kept bleeding and suppurating almost constantly, in spite of the Templar's repeated applications of elfroot poultices. But infections were not the biggest problem. Darkspawn bites carry far worse than germs.

Jehan was dying from the taint; he was also turning into a ghoul faster than Nyx would ever have believed possible.

"Need to rest. Sit daun 'or a 'ile", Jehan groaned; Nyx reflected that his missing lower lip did not help his elocution. The Templar _collapsed_ rather than he sat, dragging down the chain and the captive elf. His breath was hurried, shallow. The man was already too weak to wear armor; he had ditched his white plate along with his sword and dagger on the second day of their labored hike through the mountains. Even in his much-diminished state, Jehan was smart enough to realize what would happen if his prisoner got her hands on the weapons.

Jehan looked at Nyx and she saw that the whites of his eyes were almost entirely drowned in blood. The sorceress was starting to get that particular knot in her guts, the sickening feeling Grey Wardens got in the vicinity of darkspawn. The man's body reacted abnormally fast to the taint; Nyx suspected that it may have something to do with his spectacular Templar abilities. She examined her memories of Jehan standing radiant before the darkspawn assault, every detail crystal clear in her mind. The scene reminded her of… Wynne. It was almost as if the man had been drawing on a spirit's power. That would be quite _unorthodox_ for a Chantry servant.

Jehan closed his eyes; Nyx could see his tongue moving in his mouth trough the gaps in his ravaged flesh. The Templar would keep praying until the end. Well, actually he may go mad first…

The sounds that came from the torn mouth were somewhat perplexing, and Nyx found herself paying attention when she recognized the language for old Tevinter. With a little effort she could even make sense of the mangled words. Nyx had never been a religious person, but the Templars at Ferelden's Tower of Magi had seen to it that she was fed plenty of religion anyway. This was _not_ the Chant.

"_We bear the Maker's Light through the Age of Darkness. We stand pure, the Chosen Ones, and prepare His Reign. We wield the Light which shall consume the Wicked." _

The persistent talk about wielding light should have reminded her of something, she thought. And here was the downside to the Formari's prodigious memory: they were not very good at associating old memories with new experiences. In other terms, Nyx thought lucidly, she was an idiot savant.

"Hood."

Jehan pulled weakly on Nyx's chain, interrupting her reflections. Nodding, she foraged into her backpack, looking for the dried beef. These days, Jehan would choke on anything other than meat. And he was _hungry_, a feeling Nyx knew firsthand to be associated with the taint. Nyx made a quick evaluation of the remaining stock. At the rate the dying Templar consumed it, the cured meat would last three, four days at best.

Nyx wondered if by that time, Jehan would still be strong enough to try a bite of elf flesh.

* * *

They stood on the docks of Lake Calenhad. Leliana remembered vividly the first time she had come here; the scenery had been illuminated by the huge, silver disk of the moon. Leliana had surreptitiously watched the Warden's expression, and had been surprised to find her anxious, almost fearful. Obviously, it had not been a joyous homecoming for the elven mage.

Wynne touched her arm gently and Leliana was transported back to the grey, damp Fereldan morning. The small boat creaked softly as the trio boarded it, and started a slow drift across the lake. Before them, the Tower of Magi was but a shadow, barely glimpsed through the swirling morning mists. Peering into the dark water, Leliana imagined that she could see a faint glint of white emerging from the unseen bottom: the undead hordes of Redcliffe, their bones picked clean by the fish, rising, slow and heavy after the long slumber in the mud, to exact vengeance upon her. Shivering, Leliana turned her gaze to the approaching Tevinter spire – Morrigan's description of the edifice as an over-sized stone phallus jumped to her mind- that used to be Nyx's home and prison.

The decision to take the few hours' detour through the Tower had been a tough one. Leliana felt like any delay tugged at her heart in an almost physical way. She wanted to be with Nyx; wanted this absurd chase to be over, even if it meant that she was reunited with a sullen, empty-eyed zombie. But she also wanted to see Irving, the last person to talk with the Warden before she did that _thing_ that she had done. Leliana needed to know what had been said before her love had sunk through the dark ice.

Boarding the docks; passing through those same stone corridors that once echoed with the screams of abominations and dying mages. Leliana felt like she was walking in a dream. If she turned her head left she would see the sturdy, armored shapes of Alistair and Sten, swords held at the ready in nervous hands. Alistair would crack an atrocious joke, and a tiny figure on Leliana's right would sigh in exasperation.

Leliana looked around, just to be sure. On her left she saw Zevran, on her right was Wynne, and she felt terribly lonely.


	11. Chapter 11: A fox's story

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**A fox's story**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

The winter was early in the Frostback Mountains. The fox had not eaten for days; the snow and cold winds had sent a host of smaller creatures scurrying into their deep dens, not to emerge before spring. What prey remained above ground was hungry, fast, and wary. The fox didn't have the luxury of a white winter coat, and its fiery red fur betrayed its every move above the thin layer of frozen snow.

Something caught the fox's attention and it froze, tiny nostrils flaring. The wind carried the promise of food, the heavy, sweet aroma of decaying meat mixed with a peculiar bitterness that the fox could not quite identify. Whimpering excitedly, the fox followed the scent to the narrow, rocky dell where passing bipeds sometimes threw garbage. A glimpse of movement caught its eye, and the fox scurried to hide behind a great, protruding stone, its sleek head emerging moments later to spy on the final act in a sinister play.

* * *

Nyx felt Jehan's mind snap moments before he started tugging on her chain; the painful knot in her gut warned her that the shambling _thing_ behind her was now more darkspawn than human.

And so she had the chains in her hand when the tug came, Jehan's wheezing breath coming faster as his hunger got the best of him – there was no Archdemon whose song might have channeled the beastly impulses that now drove the fallen Templar, and no room left in his rotting brains for any thought of Andraste's mercy. Jehan pulled, and Nyx threw herself backwards, pulling and spinning with all her tiny body's might, striving to unbalance the man in an attempt to maintain the distance between her flesh and the ghoul's decaying teeth. Nyx felt her broken fingers creak and twist in the struggle, but the wizened flesh and tendons of her left hand were uncannily strong, and she held fast to the chain.

Ghoul or not, the dying Templar was weakened to the extent that he was an equal match for a cold, skinny elf woman, and so they stumbled for a moment like a couple of drunks, their dance as clumsy as it was deadly. And all the while, there was nothing in Nyx's mind, no fear or anger at the thing that strived to kill her, nothing but her one and only goal for this life, the one thing she had clung to as the lyrium brand froze her world.

_Leliana will live._

There was no emotion attached to this thought; it was a _fact_, pure and simple.

Nyx stepped to her left, abruptly changing the angle of the pull, and the dying man fell with a yell of pain, the tattered remains of his face leaving a red and black splatter on the hard, frozen snow. Nyx kept pulling, dragging him towards the side of the road, her thin muscles straining hard against the man's weight, over twice her own.

Jehan pulled with renewed strength and tried to get back to his feet when he saw the pile of stones, but the elf was as relentless as the biting Southern wind, and at long last she got hold of a stone almost as big as her head. They both stopped pulling; the stone was raised. Jehan's hands shooting up in a supplicating move, the stone coming down. Jehan's hands fell limp, and up the stone came, and down, and again.

And again.

And again.

Then Nyx moved on to the Templar's wrist, just below the steel shackle, and this part took a long time.

She paused to catch her breath and she saw the fox, its tiny head emerging from behind a pile of rubble. The wind tousled the animal's fur, the sunlight sparkled like red gold on the tiny head, and for a second Nyx was reminded of something. Then an icy barb pierced her forehead and she went back to the task at hand.

* * *

Diane Pellerin strode through Chateau des Anges' terminally clean dungeons with the quick, precise movements of a spider in her own web. Unlike some people of her acquaintance, Diane took very little pleasure in the scenes of misery that she glimpsed through the bars of the holding cells. Diane was not beyond compassion, not entirely; she merely did not allow compassion to get in the way of business.

Diane's business was to save the world from sin, and she did her business well. Under Diane's guidance, the Light Bearers had risen from a reasonably influent, shadowy cult to being the single most powerful faction in the Chantry. All shrouded in utmost secrecy, and all thanks to the resurrection of the Inquisition, that wonderful intelligence and terror machine that her predecessors at the head of the Order had sought to evade rather than _infiltrate_.

Diane's lips stretched in a thin, cold smile. It was no wonder that the rise of the Wolf should happen during her time, she thought with a hint of pride. Pride was sinful, but if the Maker had chosen _her_ to lead humanity through the single most important event since the death of Andraste, well… Diane wasn't about to second-guess Him.

To be fair, Diane thought, part of the credit for the rise of the Order lay with Empress Celene's absurd and impious reforms. The Empress' insistence that the Chantry refrain from interfering in temporal matters, and the relative protection she had granted independent philosophers, Dalish elves and other heathens had incensed many in the clergy. It wasn't very hard for the Light Bearers to recruit from the ill-content and the hardliners, especially in the form of low-ranking acolytes: those who were told a little less than the truth about the Order's actual agenda. The full Initiates, those who underwent the Light Bearer's painful Rites, were but a small minority, but they were the herders, and the rest were the sheep.

And now the Wolf was coming. Diane smiled at her analogy as she entered the dissection room.

Dissection of cadavers had always been a rather controversial topic within the Chantry. On the one hand, there were those who championed the advancement of medical science in the name of compassion. On the other hand, there were those who lumped the practice with the shadowy arts of necromancy and blood magic, and advocated respect in dealing with the earthly remains of believers.

Both camps were fools in Diane's eyes. Science and medicine merely dealt with symptoms, since sickness and death were but the consequence of a world struggling to survive without its Maker's Light. And those who could not distinguish between blood magic and a little dissection needed glasses, or more likely, needed an injection of molten lead through their eye sockets to permanently silence their stupidity. As for the Light Bearers, they would do _as they saw fit_.

The room was small, squeaky clean and well-lit, an ingenious system of vertical shafts ensuring that the smoke from the numerous candles did not linger. Diane's assistant, Sister Helena, a comely lass with bright blue eyes and a rocky Anderfels accent, stood before the long marble table, readying various blades and saws. She straightened at Diane's entry and saluted respectfully, arms crossed on her chest. Diane nodded curtly.

"Where is this one from?" Diane asked, pointing at the immobile, naked form on the stone table.

"La Tannerie."

Diane nodded. La Tannerie was the uninspired name attached to the tanner quarter, a shabby, stinking neighborhood located well outside Val Royaux proper, downstream of the city where the noxious effluents would not disturb respectable citizens. La Tannerie had a high mortality in any season, especially among apprentices who had to waddle in the toxic pits to handle the skins. Diane examined the corpse.

The deceased had been a portly man of about forty, the purple veins on his nose telling of a certain fondness for the bottle. A master tanner, probably; mere workers did not survive or stay for long in this industry, and very few outsiders ever came to stay in the Tannerie. The corpse's features were horribly distorted, frozen in a silent scream as though the man had died in the throes of terror. Which, Diane reflected grimly, he probably _had_.

"No visible injuries or abnormalities," Helena added helpfully.

Diane scowled. She could darn well see _that_.

"How did we get him?"

Helena consulted her notes and replied in horribly mangled Orlesian. Diane reflected, not for the first time, that Anders accent was akin to throat cancer.

"Templars were called by his family. He had been screaming for almost half an hour when they arrived. The man died minutes later. No demonic possession, no evidence of magic. Just… the screams, and the tears, Your Holiness."

"_Good_. Cut him up."

Diane looked on as the younger woman quickly and efficiently cut the corpses' abdomen and chest open, using a sharp blade for flesh and heavy iron shears for the ribcage. Helena was trained as an Inquisitor, and this entailed a lot more than taking notes and singing the Chant. With a little more experience, the girl might be worthy of the Rite of Initiation. It would be nice to be able to speak freely in her presence. Well, more freely.

"We have something, Your Holiness." The young woman's voice stayed calm, but the way she held up the dead man's heart at arm's length hinted at more than a little discomfort. Diane's rodent eyes widened ever so slightly as she detailed her assistant's find.

At first glance, it seemed that the organ was wrapped in extremely thin, loose wire mesh. Looking closer, Diane saw that the intricate network of silver lines closely followed the natural pattern of veins and nerves. Something had been at work in the master tanner's body, something that had not quite succeeded before the man's life force had snapped. Diane pulled out one of the silver tendrils with tweezers, and she felt a weak, but definite pull as the thing sought to embed itself into flesh again. As she had expected, the thing was alive.

They cut more dead flesh, and examined more organs. Everywhere they found traces of the living metal. Diane looked up at her assistant. The young woman was visibly upset, but well in control of her emotions. _Good_.

"Helena?"

"Your Holiness?"

"I want this body burned at once. Then you will send word through all Chantries and Templar garrisons. Any and all who die with the symptoms are to be cremated within hours; let the local clergy arrange for speedy rites. Any survivors must be executed at once, their heads separated from their bodies, and the remains cremated. Have the Templars work closely with alienage elders; there will be _more_ there."

Diane reflected for a moment, then added, very softly:

"We shall call this a plague, for the moment."

As she made her way back to her quarters, Diane could not help feeling the slightest pinch of worry. Everything was going as expected. Only it was all happening a little bit too fast.

She would be relieved to get her hands on the Wolf Born.

* * *

They found the Templars' camp later that day.

It had been five days since they had taken leave of Wynne. The old enchanter was needed at the Tower, not only to help rebuild the Ferelden Circle, but also to assure the interim should Irving's declining health take a turn for the worst. Wynne appeared to see a quiet irony in the situation. Leliana had been saddened to leave her behind, but at the same time she felt deeply relieved that she would not be risking another person's life in her desperate hunt for her Warden.

Leliana's discussions with Irving had not taught her much. Although the old mage had confirmed her suspicion that Nyx had chosen the Tranquil path to escape some dark Fade entity's grasp, the Warden had not shared much with her former mentor. Leliana suspected that the elf had been unable to overcome her distrust of the Circle and of everything Irving stood for.

Leliana frowned at the recollection. She loved Nyx tenderly, but sometimes the sorceress' blindness to others' feelings could be _infuriating_. Leliana had expected Irving to be the manipulative, self-righteous bastard Nyx had described to her. Instead, Leliana had found a very frail old man, grieving deeply over the loss of his brightest student. The bard knew that much of the blame lay with Fen'Harel's manipulations, but she still felt anger at the elf.

And it was quite possible that she would get an animated discussion with Nyx in the coming days. The thought obliterated Leliana's fear and sent her pulse racing. Ever since she left the Tower with Zevran, Leliana had felt, in an inexplicable way, that she was getting closer to her Warden. With every passing mile, she felt stronger, more aware, happier too; it was as though her body was rejuvenated in preparation for her reunion with Nyx. Sometimes Leliana would just reach for her lute and sing a tune on the road, Zevran joining in with a voice that was not too bad for an assassin. Leliana had long ago decided to push aside all thoughts of what would happen when she was finally reunited with her Warden.

_Qui vivra, verra._ Live and see.

It was not all just gut feeling, either. Both Leliana and Zevran were highly skilled at tracking down a fleeing prey, and Nyx's Templar escort had taken no precaution whatsoever to cover their tracks. Leliana had beamed for a whole day at the discovery of a ruin by the roadside, where the imprint of small, elven feet was clearly etched on the ash-covered ground. Leliana remembered tracing the contour of one of Nyx's footprints with her finger, a big, silly grin on her face, until Zevran asked her whether she _really _wanted to catch the Warden or would settle for a shoe, not that he meant to comment on her fetishes...

Leliana was getting close, and she doubted that the prey would elude her for long. She hoped against all hope that the Templars could be reasoned with, or maybe that she would be able to snatch the sorceress away stealthily and without violence. Leliana generally saw Templars as good men, and she would not gladly spill good men's blood, not if she had a choice.

But if they had _hurt_ Nyx… Then Maker have mercy on them, for Leliana did _not _think she would. She consciously pushed back the thought and its cortege of unspoken fears, and focused on the chase.

Now, as the horses' hooves made crisp, crunching sounds on the hardened snow, Leliana found herself peering ahead eagerly, looking for the next trace of her lost Warden. She was only mildly disappointed when Zevran discovered the camp first: one did not fall in love with an elf without learning a little about their sensory capabilities.

Zevran's victorious smirk turned to a concerned frown as the rogues tethered their mounts to a nearby column and started to scout around the abandoned camp, moving carefully to avoid damaging tracks. Leliana felt her stomach knot in fear when she discovered the snow-covered remains of horses and genlocks. It looked like the Templars had been overrun by the creatures, maybe during their sleep. The bard forced herself to scan the ground methodically, refusing to let fear overcome her.

She found the tracks and whispered her thanks to the Maker, her voice trembling just a little. The elf's imprints in the snow were still relatively clear, thanks to the cold weather and the absence of new snowfall. Leliana was starting to form a mental image of the events that occurred here: Nyx had lain in a spot which kept the faint imprint of a small body; then the elf had crossed the camp, found only dead horses, and finally taken refuge in the now-collapsed tent, where she had been joined by a tall, human male. Hours later they had departed, leaving clear footprints in the deeper snow. The man had a shuffle to his walk, and he had left a bloody trail behind him.

Crouching by the bard's side, Zevran threw her a knowing wink. The elf's brown eyes sparkled with a predator's excitement.

"No horses. Only one Templar, he is wounded, easy job. We can be upon them in two days, bellissima."

"Then let's make it one, beau gosse."

"Eager, are we?"

Leliana smiled brightly. There were no words for the fire that burned in her.

"You have no idea."

* * *

The fox watched the smaller biped pick up her things and leave, walking with the steady, confident gait of one who goes back to their den. The fox waited until the sound of chains had all but faded in the distance to approach the cooling body on the road. Its scent was disturbing, and the fox hesitated for a while, tiny nostrils flaring in the wind.

Hunger proved too strong. The fox lapped the Templar's brains and congealed blood off the reddened snow, growling faintly when the taint started to burn its throat and innards.

And so the fox's story ends.


	12. Chapter 12: Dreams of betrayal

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Dreams of betrayal  
**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

M rated for a reason.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

"So, what will you do when you and Nyx are finally reunited?"

Leliana wondered if the question was as innocent as it sounded. There was a cruel streak in the assassin, a contained violence that roamed just below Zevran's quiet, ironic countenance, but neither she nor the Warden had been on the receiving end of that cruelty… Except for that first, failed attempt, and that was history. Still, Leliana suspected that Zevran was too smart to ask such questions lightly.

"I don't know," she answered truthfully, "before the fall of the Archdemon, Nyx and I talked about traveling together, seeing the world…" Leliana's voice trailed off; those few days of shared happiness seemed incredibly remote now, like those stories bards told of ancient heroes and their high feats. Some day, Leliana thought sadly, she might even find it hard to separate the real facts from the Tale of Nyx, the epic, somewhat embellished ballad she was writing at camp during her few hours of daily respite.

"That doesn't sound like a bad plan at all. If you plan to visit Antiva, I can give you the addresses of the finest taverns and bathhouses in all of Thedas."

Leliana smiled, glad that the conversation was taking a less serious turn.

"I heard a little about Antivan bathhouses. I don't think Nyx would be thrilled if I took her to one of those."

Zevran shook his head in theatrical disapproval. The long travel in the outdoors, and especially the last days of cold, sunny weather, had turned his skin a deeper shade of brown, a rather striking contrast with his blond locks. Leliana reckoned that the assassin would turn many heads in Orlais, and not only elven heads. She might have to brief him about Orlesian etiquette. Val Royaux society could be very open-minded, but on the condition that decorum must be respected at all times. Zevran was probably going to love it.

"I suppose you heard that Antivan bathhouses are glorified brothels. It is a rather gross oversimplification."

The elf hesitated, searching for words in the Fereldan tongue. Come to think of it, Leliana should probably teach him some Orlesian basics as well; the language should come easy to an Antivan.

Leliana noticed approvingly that even while the both of them chatted lightly, their horses trotting at a good pace on the Highway, Zevran's brown eyes kept shifting back and forth between her and the road ahead. Good rogues never ceased scanning their environment. Leliana did the same; she had done it for so long that vigilance had become as much a part of her nature as her love of tales and music, although the former was born of necessity and the latter out of passion. Even during Leliana's brief stint as a Chantry sister, not much of what happened in the cloister could escape her observation, be it a pretty lay sister's dalliance with the handyman or the silent roving of the resident cats. In a way, her perpetual vigilance had helped alleviate Leliana's boredom even as she denied its existence.

"You see", Zevran continued, "The bathhouse transcends all classification. It is a place to indulge in _all_ fine things, and the good ones offer the finest wines, the best food, the best masseuses… Anything can be enjoyed there, but perhaps nothing beats lounging in hot water and having a long chat with friends."

"You certainly make it sound lovely", Leliana answered dreamily. The idea of a bath, alone or otherwise, was quite appealing after all this time in the wilderness.

"I do, don't I? Hmm, wait until I tell you about the brothels…"

The conversation went on in such fashion for a while, until they finally fell into an easy, companionable silence. Leliana often wondered what Zevran thought during these times; even after all these months on the road, the assassin was hard to read. Leliana suspected that his smooth exterior hid deep wounds, but he had coated them in layer after layer of silky indifference, like a pearl hiding the oyster's secret shame. Those such as Zevran, Leliana knew, never really opened to others. They slid and rolled through life, smooth and hardly noticed, and sometimes when the pressure of what festered inside became too great, they just cracked, and were washed away by the tide.

* * *

Nyx should have felt tired.

Fatigue was definitely one of the sensations available to Tranquils, although it did not affect them as much as it would a normal person. It did not affect their mood, for one.

But Nyx felt no such thing as fatigue as she inched her way back along the snow-covered Highway. It was a desperate gamble, this backtracking on foot across the mountains, but it was not unreasonable. With each step she took, Nyx felt the Bond strengthen, the pull on her life becoming more tenuous. And so there was no fatigue, only the odd feeling that she became more aware, more _alive_ as she walked on. She felt like she could have walked on forever.

As it were, Nyx had been walking for only a couple of hours when she heard the rhythmic clack-clack of horse hooves on stone and ice, rising from the valet behind her. Nyx considered running, but Bond or no Bond, there was no way she could outrun galloping horses, and so she hurried to hide in the shadow of the trees on the mountainside. As the newcomers came near the sorceress snatched a look at them.

They were an Orlesian patrol, assigned to the protection of the highly disputed Fereldan border: six mustachioed men on six tall horses, clad in heavy plate under heavy fur coats that fluttered in the wind of their course. The men, however, were not the fugitive's biggest concern. Running before the patrol were the shaggy figures of Montfort shepherd dogs, a long-haired breed that, while smaller than and not as smart as Fereldan mabari, was often employed in hunting wolves and smugglers.

The sorceress ran deeper into the woods, moving as silently as possible, to little avail. Soon a chorus of excited barks broke out on the road, and within minutes Nyx stood in the center of a circle of sharp-looking pikes and snarling dogs.

"_Au nom de l'Impératrice, je vous arrête!" _

The man who spoke had a longer, curlier moustache than the rest, and Nyx assumed that he must be the patrol's commanding officer. She did her best to stand tall and dignified, but her meek, flat tone did not impress much.

"I am a Fereldan Grey Warden…" she started in hesitant Orlesian.

"Grey Warden, _mon cul!_ We know what you are, Maleficar. We found the body of your victim. We can see the chains around your neck."

The pikes moved closer, menacing, and Nyx stood very still, unwilling to do anything that might give the soldiers an excuse for violence.

* * *

Leliana's mood suddenly took a turn for the worst as _something_ started waning within her, something she had hardly been aware of before. Now it felt like an essential part of her being was slowly and steadily unraveling. She knew it was Nyx; it had to be.

"Are you all right, dear?"

The frown on Leliana's face told Zevran that she was _not_. The bard shook her head somberly.

"Something is wrong, Zev. I think Nyx is moving away from us. We need to hurry."

"I do not suppose you could elaborate on that? Wait!"

Leliana's only answer was to spur her mount to a gallop, her red mane flying in the winter wind like a bloodied banner. Cursing, Zevran followed, and the thunder of their course filled the mountain pass.

* * *

The Orlesian border guards enjoyed the luxury of a well-organized network of relay stations, each one manned by a couple of caretakers and housing a full replacement of six horses, plus relevant supply stocks. It was part of a wider effort by Empress Celene to rein in the activities of dwarven smugglers. Due to the endemic corruption in the Orlesian military, this effort was only moderately successful, but it had at least contributed to improving the safety of travelers and residents in the southern marches of the Empire.

As far as Nyx was concerned, the stations were a serious complication, since they allowed her captors to travel at a brisk pace on fresh horses, stopping only long enough for the men to have a little rest and sleep. Nyx could feel the Bond stretching again, although the drain on her life force was still bearable enough for her to avoid puking all over her captors again.

Apart from the odd light slap or shove, the border guards treated her reasonably well. Nyx did not think it was due to her Tranquil status; after all, the men had found Jehan's body and were not stupid enough to believe her harmless just because she spoke slowly. More likely, the guards saw little need to get involved in what was essentially Chantry business. The sooner they delivered her into Templar hands, the faster the border guards could go back to their own duties, which mainly involved roaming the Highway to scare away bandits and smugglers, and probably taking a bribe or two in the process.

All in all, the guards were not an unpleasant bunch, chatting away in rather un-military fashion as they rode along the Highway. Nyx was surprised to hear them speak in a local idiom that sounded much like Fereldan, but she reflected that given the scale and history of the Orlesian Empire, it was perhaps to be expected.

She also noticed that the guards seemed to refer to Templars in rather unflattering terms. The term _bucket head_ came up in the conversation with clockwork regularity. There appeared to be a certain degree of distrust between the Orlesian military and the Chantry's armed forces, and the guards grumbled quietly about recent increases in the number of foreign holy warriors stationed in Orlais.

Nyx wondered if the bard may be able to use this knowledge to her advantage.

* * *

Leliana opened to the kiss, her lover's breath coming hot onto her own slick heat.

The bard gazed down tenderly at the rich, dark locks, wishing that this moment would never end. The faintest hint of Marjolaine's lips touching her, and Leliana shivered and trembled in anticipation of the reward her master was to bestow on her.

Marjolaine's kiss became more insistent and Leliana bit her lower lip forcefully, stifling a moan, for today her bard master required silence. The taste of her own blood heightened her arousal, and Leliana struggled to stay immobile, bloodied lips moving silently to form words of adoration. She craved to tell Marjolaine how much she loved her, but she dared not displease her bard master, her one reason to live, and to kill too.

Leliana caught a hint of movement in the corner of her eye, something beside the pink-covered bed, and she turned her head to look.

It was the elf, of course. Leliana had all but forgotten the elf: the one with the silver streaks in her green eyes, the one she had befriended and lured into the bard master's lair. The one she had stabbed in the back and taunted as she twisted the blade.

The strange eyes stared at Leliana from a tortured face. Below the elf's neck, flesh glistened pink and white in the dim light of the single oil lamp. The skin hung wetly from a hook on the wall; Leliana vaguely remembered that Marjolaine had promised her new shoes for her efforts. The bard smiled. Those would be such _lovely_ shoes…

The elf still lived, and her lips formed words, and those words cut through Leliana like blades.

"You betrayed me."

Leliana shook her head in denial, even though she knew it was the truth. The truth was that she was a bard, and bards betrayed all the time: for money, for love, for shits and giggles. Bards lived and died by betrayal. Bards were the lowest form of life in Thedas, and she was the worst of them. Leliana had betrayed, and ultimately destroyed every single person that had trusted her. The bard clenched her teeth on a sob, wishing for oblivion. The world would be a better place without her.

"I am sorry," she protested feebly, "I am so sorry."

Between Leliana's thighs, Marjolaine laughed quietly, a deep, throaty sound that did not sound at all like her. The bard master raised her head, and metal glistened coldly below the ebony curls.

"You betrayed _me_ too", Marjolaine reminded her, and her voice was the bubbling hiss of air escaping from a slit neck. Blood sprayed on the satin bedcover in vaguely familiar arabesques. Before Leliana's eyes Marjolaine was undergoing a transformation, her ebony curls creeping forward to cover her face, the once-magnificent head shifting and remodeling itself. The floor and the walls of the pink chamber groaned and crumbled under an impossible mass, and Leliana lay, bloodied and terrified, on the wizened leaves of a thousand sunless ages.

What stood before the bard was infinitely massive, an ancient terror in the shape of a great wolf; He was clad in black fur, steel and pride, but His rage and pain shone through His mantle like the rays of a dark sun. Leliana gazed upon a god for the first time, and she found no comfort in that sight.

Fen'Harel's mirth rumbled over the Grey Forest like a thunderstorm. His breath seared Leliana, and she gagged at the carrion stench.

The god was long past words, yet He spoke, in an infrasonic growl that evoked the slow grinding of great iron wheels deep underground, and the deep roar of hidden braziers. The god's mind resonated through the hidden darkness in Leliana's soul, and nothing could be hidden from it.

_You betrayed them all. Elves, men and dwarves. _

The Dread Maw was lowered, massive steel fangs stopping mere inches from Leliana's face, and she felt her skin roast and crinkle in the god's furnace breath.

The Great Wolf rumbled in glee.

_Your salvation doomed them all, my betrothed. As a reward, I will eat you last. You shall look on as your precious Maker is consumed. _

Leliana looked into the incandescent silver lakes that were the god's eyes, and there was no name for what she saw there: _craving_ and hatred beyond any mortal's comprehension. The great steel maw opened, and beyond it was darkness deeper than the deepest Dwarven pit, and beyond _that_…

Leliana was but a scream, and strong, wiry arms closed around her, snatching her away from the pit, back to the relative safety of the camp. Leliana shook fiercely, drenched in icy sweat. Zevran held her firmly, whispering in her ear.

"It's all right, _bella_. It's all right. It was just a dream, yes?"

Leliana nodded feebly; the memory of the encounter was already fading, leaving a vague, bitter impression on her mind; a mere shadow of things to come.

"How long?" she murmured wearily.

"Two hours. We might as well go. The horses are not nearly well-rested, but they will have to hold on."

Leliana struggled to her feet; the dream, whatever it was, had drained her of what little energy she had before she fell asleep. Of the divine encounter, nothing was left but a lingering doubt and the faint echo of an alien thought, its meaning unclear, hovering in the bard's mind like a carrion bird.

_Your salvation doomed them all. _

_

* * *

_

Something troubled Nyx's sleep.

The sorceress awoke in the absolute darkness of the cellar where she had been locked up for the night. To her silver eyes the darkness was as radiant as daylight, and she searched for the source of the dark illumination for a while before she finally turned her gaze onto herself.

It was there with her. It would always be there. Nyx's wizened hand glowed darkly in the night, silver veins writhing under the shriveled skin like unholy runes.

Apparently, Nyx thought dispassionately, it took more than a scrambled brain to be rid of the Dread God's interference. Then Leliana's terror came upon her like a silent, black wave, and the sorceress shuddered in the dark.


	13. Chapter 13: The gates of Jader

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**The gates of Jader**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Nyx used to love the sea. After so many years of confinement in the Tower of Magi, the sight of an infinite expanse of water under an infinite sky had been enough to bring tears to the sorceress' eyes when she first saw the sea in Denerim.

Now, sitting on horseback behind a man who smelled of sweat and shallot, Nyx simply tried to calculate the distance that separated her from the grayish, foaming expanse of the Waking Sea and from the limestone gates of Jader. Seen from the lower reaches of the Frostback Mountains, the Orlesian port was not a very impressive sight: a cluster of unremarkable-looking buildings, surrounded by rather low, yellowish limestone walls that looked like they would not keep an invading army at bay for long. But no army was expected to ever land close to Jader.

What the town lacked in grandeur, the harbor more than made up for. Sheltered from the Waking Sea's treacherous storms by high sea walls, the port's massive stone docks were home to dozen upon dozen of heavy war galleys, Orlais' watchdogs against qunari, pirates, and the growing ambitions of the Free Marches' merchant princes. Smaller trading vessels – and a number of sleek, sinister-looking Orlesian privateer crafts – threaded their way between the hulking warships like pilot fish among a shark pack.

All of this was of very little import to Nyx, although it did provide her numb brain with a comfortable amount of junk data to process. The sorceress was much more interested in the possibility that Jader may house Orlesian Grey Wardens en route for Ferelden, and spent a great deal of time reviewing different escape scenarios. Fen'Harel's short, unexpected reappearance was an unknown quantity, and unknown quantities troubled Nyx, as did the fact that the god had obviously not sought to possess her, but had somehow reached for Leliana's mind. Every time Nyx allowed herself to think of this particular problem, glacial pinheads drilled through her forehead, causing her to precipitously drop the matter and concentrate on more practical preoccupations.

On both sides of the road the forest and brush gave way to well-tended terrace fields as the border patrol neared the coastal plain and the outskirts of the town. The air turned noticeably warmer, a soft breeze carrying the scent of the sea – along with the less pleasant smells associated with a port. These were scents that the Highever orphan should have been familiar with, but Nyx's recollections beyond the Tower were skimpy at best, mere skeletons of memories, the fleshy parts consumed years ago by a ravenous beast that had thrown only a few cracked bones back to the sorceress. Nyx's nostrils flared inquisitively as she neared the town, but she did not brood over the past.

The Templars met Nyx's escort a few hundred yards from the city gates; ritual salutations were exchanged, along with some paperwork, and then the sweating, fur-clad mountainfolk handed the sorceress over to the men in the white carapaces. Her chains changed hands, but this time Nyx was not allowed to ride; instead she walked behind the Templar leader's mount, and the townsfolk threw the chained sorceress fearful glances as the group crossed the gates and made their way through dirty, meandering streets where the sunlight hardly trickled in between hunched, decrepit buildings. Nyx reflected that her first contact with Orlesian architecture was rather disappointing.

* * *

Orlesian beer tasted like goat piss.

Say what you want about Orlesian wines being the finest in the world – a claim that Antivans disputed with the energy of despair– but as far as beer was concerned, the ribbon-covered Southern bastards were sorely unenlightened. Girls were fine, though, albeit Ogmundr sometimes found himself missing Anderfels titties. But the bull-necked Grey Warden was not one to give in to nostalgia for long, and so he strived to make the best of his last days in Orlais by sampling taverns of Jader.

Ogmundr was part of a small but battle-hardened Anders detachment due to join forces with Ferelden's new Warden Commander, some Orlesian guy he had never met. Ogmundr had his doubts about the welcome the locals would give their neighbors and former invaders, but he was still rather excited at the idea of moving to a country that had just been through a Blight. After all, he might get a chance to kill darkspawn in the open, and _that_ would be a welcome change from killing darkspawn in stinking tunnels under the Hunterhorns. Every new kill was personal for Ogmundr, and for good reason: the taint in his organism was starting to act a little crazy, and by his own reckoning, he would probably have to take a permanent vacation in a moldy Dwarven vault within two years, maybe three if he stalled a bit.

In the meantime, here he was in the Shark's Dive, Jader's most prominent tavern, swilling bad beer and cuddling with a quick-witted, dark-haired cutie that he suspected may be part of a privateer crew. All in all, things could have been worse for this Grey Warden.

The seafaring cutie – what was her name again? Ogmundr would have to be careful with that- stirred in his lap, and the shift in pressure reminded Ogmundr that his bladder was not as capacious as it used to be, and that a quick trip to a nearby alley would be a wise idea. Slipping a hand under his _amie du jour's_ posterior, he delicately deposited her onto a nearby stool. The privateer's eyebrow arched quizzically.

"You wait for me here, sweetie? I'll be back in no time," Ogmundr said in what he hoped was a seductive whisper but, considering the bear-like chest whence it issued, came out closer to a mabari's growl.

"Don't stay away too long, Papa, or I'll grow restless," was the bittersweet answer, accompanied by a resounding kiss on Ogmundr's ruddy cheek. _Papa. Humph.  
_

Ogmundr swayed slightly as he exited the tavern in search of a relatively private spot to relieve himself of what he reckoned had never been beer in the first place. Not that he was a particularly modest man, but Grey Wardens should have _some_ standards. Ogmundr found said private spot in the form of a reasonably sheltered doorway that was occupied only by a sleeping beggar and an ancient-looking pile of trash. The graying Warden did his best to spare the former while he aimed at the latter, eliciting shrill protests from the drenched rats inside.

Willhem was just done lacing his trousers- he was not in the habit of wearing armor when he went out for a drink, although he knew folks who did – when he felt the familiar pinch in his guts that informed him of another Grey Warden's approach. Ogmundr wondered absently which one of his comrade-in-arms was coming his way. He wasn't sure he welcomed the company at all, not with that girl… Isolde? Isidora? Arsi… Damn if he could remember Southern names, but he sure wanted to see more of her, and he did _not_ want to be dragged into yet another Grey Warden drinking competition, complete with booze-fuelled strategy analyses and Maker knows what other silliness. Ogmundr had only three years to live and little patience left for silliness.

The sound of horse hooves trampling the muddy ground filled the alley, and Ogmundr waited, arms crossed, for his fellow Wardens to make their appearance. For some reason, he felt very aware of the weight of the greatsword strapped to his back.

* * *

Nyx almost bumped into the lead Templar's horse as her escort suddenly stopped in the dirty alley, the men settling into uneasy silence. The elven sorceress took two steps to the side to look at the obstacle that seemed to have single-handedly stopped a column of armed horsemen.

Her first impression was that the man was _big_. Not ogre-big, but he could not have been much smaller than Sten. The silver threads among his long, blond plaits reinforced the Qunari image, as did his calm demeanor as he stood in the middle of the street, legs slightly spread, feet planted firmly in the mucky ground. There was a massive sword on his back. Steely grey eyes locked onto the sorceress, and a bushy eyebrow arched in surprise.

Nyx's brain stored each one of these details with perfect accuracy, although none of those really mattered at the moment. What mattered was the cape the man wore. The cape emblazoned with twin griffons, symbol of the Grey Wardens.

"Please stand aside, good Ser." The Templar leader's voice was as polite as they came, but there was no mistaking the intent. An order was being issued, and the giant in the alley smiled coldly in response.

"There is a Grey Warden among you. I demand to know why you are holding one of us," the man said in an even voice that reminded Nyx of an ogre's growl. The Templar leader shifted uneasily in his saddle.

"This is no Grey Warden business. This _maleficar_ here is under Chantry authority, and you will stand aside, Ser."

"With due respect, _Ser_, you're sorely mistaken, on all three counts."

Angry murmurs rose among Nyx's escort and hands gripped swords' hilts, but the Templar leader silenced his men with an imperious gesture of his steel-gloved hand. Nyx noticed that there was a faint glow to that hand, and she examined the Templar's armored back with renewed curiosity. It was a pity that she could not see the Beyond anymore; Nyx could have bet that this guy caused ripples in the Veil like a shark in a pond.

"You are not in a position to threaten us, Warden." The Templar spoke softly, but the light shining through his hand had grown infinitesimally brighter. "Stand aside or we _will_ use force."

The older Warden's hand slowly rose towards the hilt of the great sword strapped to his back.

"Wait."

Nyx calmly stood by the lead Templar's horse, her bound hands raised in a gesture of appeasement. She had spoken without really knowing what she was going to say, but now the little wheels in her mind spun faster than light. One Grey Warden could not take on a whole Templar squad, not to mention the shining man's mysterious abilities. But the Order of Grey Wardens was a force to be reckoned with; if anything, the news of Nyx's capture would create some tension with the Chantry. Anything that could facilitate a bard's job...

There was a hiss of steel above her as the Templar drew his sword. The older Warden's massive blade was already out of its scabbard, balanced lightly in expert hands, even as the rest of Nyx's escort scrambled to draw their weapons.

"Shut up, Maleficar," the lead Templar spat as he yanked Nyx's chain hard enough to make her stagger. The sorceress tried to curl her lips into a smile, but wasn't very successful.

"In war, victory", she rasped. She felt a blade come to rest on the nap of her neck, but she ignored it. Were the Templar smarter, he would bash her over the head with the scabbard. Then again, he probably took his lyrium religiously.

"In peace, vigilance,' the older Warden answered automatically, a puzzled expression on his ruddy features.

"In death, sacrifice," the sorceress droned on, ignoring the faint, cool feeling of the blade. The Templar would not dare strike. "I am Nyx of the Grey Wardens of Ferelden. Tell our brothers and sisters that I have been unjustly detained. I will be in Val Royeaux."

She could feel the Templar fume above her as the older Warden nodded curtly and stepped aside, his expression unreadable, sword still held at the ready. Nyx knew exactly what was happening under the Templar's bucket helm. The best course of action would be to kill the interfering Warden; but the repercussions of such an act could be broad and far-reaching, not to mention the immediate loss of several men. The Templars' orders would be to escort a maleficar to a waiting ship, _not_ to initiate a political imbroglio with the oldest, most respected organization in Thedas. _In consequence…_

"Enough! Sheathe your weapons, brothers. We march for the Port."

* * *

Ogmundr watched in disbelief as the elf and her escort disappeared around a corner. Templars detaining a Grey Warden… Ogmundr had never heard of such a thing in nearly a quarter of an Age of uneasy cohabitation with the darkspawn taint. But then there was something special about that sister from Ferelden…

As Ogmundr made his way back to the tavern – he would send couriers to Weisshaupt and Val Royeaux later in the day, he decided– he kept thinking of the Warden oath. _In war, victory_…

Surely things would not come to _that, _Ogmundr reflected grimly as he crossed into the cheerful dint and stench of thee tavern, careful not to knock his head on the doorframe. Even as he scanned the room for his privateer, a supple figure emerged from the shadows by the doorstep and coiled itself around him.

"Something wrong, Papa?" The dark-haired privateer murmured as her brown, scarred hand toyed with the Warden's plaits.

"Only major shit happening with a Fereldan Grey Warden," Ogmundr groaned.

"You don't say", Isabella replied with a spark of interest in her dark eyes.

* * *

Leliana stood, straight and gracious like an elven statue of yore, on the thick sea wall, her blue eyes fixed on the horizon. She felt the power of the Maker in the waves crashing below, and she found strength in the savage beauty of the roiling sea. Leliana licked her lips and tasted salt, wind and freedom.

By the bard's side Zevran fidgeted with the contents of his many pockets, decidedly unaffected by the majesty of the elements. After a while, the elf seemed reassured that none of his precious poisons was leaking into his clothing, and turned towards Leliana with a questioning look.

"So, shall we go and look for a ship?" he asked softly.

Leliana nodded and threw a last glance at the tiny white sail, far to the West. She felt strangely calm, now that at long last her quarry was in sight. Leliana turned away from the ocean and started running lightly towards the docks, humming a tune as she went.

The bard lived for the chase, and the chase went on.


	14. Chapter 14: Hunters

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Hunters**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

She moves through the forest with the silent gait of a predator, a skill for which she has no match even among her brethren. The intruders' voices disturb the sacred silence of the forest, and for this, she intends to wreak swift, definitive vengeance. Leliana suspects that she could fly and fall upon the intruders like a murderous thunderstorm, or summon the spirits of the trees and let them deal with the nuisance; or she could simply will the ground to swallow them all. Leliana can hardly grasp the extent of the _other's_ power, even though she sees through her eyes and thinks her thoughts, but she understands that there are few limits for a being who weaves the musical threads of magic as naturally as she breathes.

But such is not _her _way. Her way is that of stealth and patience, of the slow tracking and the lightning-fast onslaught, blood pumping fast in unison with the prey's. And in this, Leliana and the _other_ share a deep connection.

There was a time, Leliana now understands vaguely, when the People did not walk this world on two legs, but slithered, ran or flew in a myriad other forms, not all of them comprehensible to a mortal's mind. But then the elves came and knelt before the ancestors. The elves gave the People their own shape along with their life blood, and in return they received many gifts: speech, immortality, and a measure of the People's ability to shape the world to their whim.

But these were the times of her respected ancestors, those who played at the First One's feet. _She _was born later, long after the Incursion, long after the Fires of the Sun scorched the land and melted the mountains. Hers is but a shadow of the ancestors' glory, yet she is a goddess in this scarred world.

_The First One. The Incursion. The Fires._ The notions are intimately familiar to the _other_, a part of the mental substrate whence her mind springs from, but when Leliana tries to delve into those memories, she is met with a pang of annoyance and mental barriers are erected. Leliana is being taught, but she can only go with the vision's flow.

The voices rise in excitement, causing myriads of brightly-colored birds and flying reptiles to take wing in the gigantic trees. Suddenly the intruders' voices are covered by a shrill roar, and _she _growls softly in dismay. Entering Arlathan's belt of sacred forest is a serious offence; poaching her game is even worse. She has recognized the coarse voices… The elves call them _shemlen_, quick-children, due to their short lifespan and the dangerous contaminants in their blood. The People call them brutes and _wyrmlings_, since they worship the immortal Wyrms who crossed the sea, fleeing their own lands before the onslaught of the Trespassers.

_The Trespassers_… Memories related to this name are sealed off even more hermetically than the others, but Leliana has no desire to explore anyway. Leliana does not really wish to know what sort of beings evoke sacred terror in the mind of a goddess.

She climbs a towering tree with the speed and agility of a squirrel, her bare hands and feet finding purchase on even the smoothest surface, and peers down at the hunt unfolding below.

The humans are fighting a High Dragon, a ponderous beast of about six hundred springs. Far below, among the twisting roots of a great tree, she can see small, glistening orbs of white, the clutch of dragon eggs that is the hunters' prize. She knows that the humans use the blood and eggs of dragons in their obscure rituals, seeking to communicate with their slumbering gods. She does not know why the undying Old Wyrms have retreated below the ground; she suspects that they are simply hiding until the world is safe again.

On the ground below, the dragon roars in agony as the humans wrap it in crackling thunder; the electrical storm bypasses the beast's scales and causes its massive muscles to spasm helplessly. She notices approvingly how the gifted ones among the hunters sustain their power with the rest's life force. It appears that the humans' mastery of the energies of the Beyond has improved markedly over the past few centuries, and she wonders whether her Lord may be right. Maybe the hairy brutes ought to be wiped out before their budding civilization becomes a threat to the elves and their masters. By her reckoning they are still thousands of years behind, but what is a thousand years?

The dragon falls with a last, thundering roar, and the hunters busy themselves with the butchering, aided by a small troop of different-looking humans. Those are tethered one to another by heavy chains; they reek of fear and despair. Leliana understands that those are slaves, but to the _other_, the concept is as alien as mercy is to tigers. The People understand chains only as ornaments. The People do not take slaves, or prisoners, for that matter…

She waits patiently for the humans to complete the rituals, the symbolic offering of blood to the benevolent earth and the thankful chanting of _her_ own name. When she realizes that the brutes are as sacrilegious as they are unwelcome, she jumps lazily to the ground, a hundred an odd feet below, landing with a small shock wave that sends nearby humans reeling.

She smiles, and growls, and sings.

What happens next is enough to make Leliana, a seasoned veteran of a hundred battles, feel a little sick, even as the _other's_ _bloodlust_ overloads her senses, as intoxicating as a potent spirit.

Singing, she plucks the strings of time, and the quarry's awkward movements become sluggish, as though they were waddling neck-high in thick molasses.

Singing, she rips a man's heart out of his ribcage with her bare hand, smells the meat, and discards it. Others fall, and are similarly discarded. Leliana's perspective shifts oddly as the _other_ alters her size and mass according to the needs of the moment.

Singing, she dances gracefully between arcs of crackling lightning and streams of flames as the human mages loose all control and fire spells haphazardly, killing their own and missing their foe. She dispatches them quickly and mercifully, but their flesh is laced with an unsavory quickness, unfit for the People.

Singing, she forms a bow out of thin air and strands of magic, and calmly picks off the survivors as they run.

The chained ones lie prostrate on the floor; she considers them for a heartbeat, and she stops singing: the hunt is over. The humans dare not raise their heads as she walks unhurriedly to the dragon's half-butchered carcass and rips a large chunk of flesh from its back, close to the spine, where the meat is white and tender.

_Flesh for the body, blood for the soul. Such is the way of the ancestors. _

The vast puddles of the dragon's still living blood evaporate as she takes a first bite of dragon meat; she feeds slowly, religiously, for in doing so she is honoring the soul of the forest, and the sacrifice of the ancestors who died to protect the land. When it is done, she turns to the chained humans and addresses them in the tongue of the elves. Her voice is the sound of clear forest streams and the music of the wind playing through leaves, mixed with a panther's velvet growl. It is the voice of the forest, beautiful and inhuman, and Leliana cannot help but feel a pang of jealousy.

"Your hunters have sinned against the gods, and the gods have spilled their blood. You must leave at once."

A human male – the face is covered in matted fur - timidly raises his head and speaks in broken elvish. His words make little sense.

"Glorious one, they were not our hunters but our…" the human struggles to find a word in the elven language, "masters," he finally eructs. She stares at him, mildly displeased at the brute's audacity.

"Radiant one, we have nowhere to go", the brute continues with a quaver in his voice, "The masters will kill us if we return alone."

The meaning is obvious to Leliana, but the _other_ just cannot wrap her mind around the concept. One does _not_ hunt their own blood. Her irritation grows, and a soft growl forms in her throat.

"For mercy's sake, Radiant One…" The man seems at a loss for words, stuttering in a deluge of spittle. The reek of fear emanating from him intensifies, causing her to snarl instinctively. Maybe the creature is diseased.

"_The wyrmling speaks the truth." _

The newcomer speaks in the tongue of the People: partly through vibrations in the air, and partly through deeper vibrations through her very soul. She reacts with catlike speed, but arms already close around her, encircling her in an embrace stronger than any metal the diminutive cave-dwellers have ever forged in their mountain keeps. She purrs in contentment, for only one being in this world can thus catch the Lady of the Hunt unawares.

"My Lord," she whispers-thinks, reveling in the power that she feels surging into her body as their auras mingle and fuse. His power is as dark and foreboding as her own is light and musical, but she has nothing to fear from him.

"My Lady", he answers in kind, a tinge of anger in his mind-growl, for claiming her goes against the decrees of others. He has not openly rebelled, not yet, but she knows that the long millennia of his patience are drawing to an end. The thought fills her with pride and fear. A second later he turns his attention back to the groveling creatures before the divine couple.

"The wyrmlings catch and use their blood-kin just like ants catch and use plant lice", he explains, using an image that she can understand. His hand traces her thigh, and the birds in the trees grow dissolute.

"They eat their shit?" she asks distractedly, her nostrils flaring as she takes in his scent, wild and intoxicating.

His laugh booms through the primeval forest. Dragons and panthers cower in fright, but in the distance cold voices answer him with songs of their own, sinister and melodious.

"An interesting metaphor. May I?"

She nods indifferently. By right the forest is his as well as hers; so is all _game _within. The humans should have run.

She feels a pang of longing as the somber aura pulls away from her, her Lord moving towards his quarry. The Veil shakes like a leaf in a storm as he shifts into a form more suitable for slaughter.

Screams of anguish resonate through the forest, and Leliana wakes up in her sweat-drenched bunk, the glory of the Great Wolf still burning her retina.

* * *

The marine breeze helped her feel better. This time the dream – Leliana did not want to think of it as a vision, because _this_ certainly did not come from the Maker – had left her with a lingering headache and the vaguest shadows of memories, and she needed the relative quiet of the vast, open sea to meditate.

Whenever she was not sleeping, Leliana spent as little time as possible in her cabin, mainly due to Isabela and Zevran's noisy, relentless and obviously gratifying mating, too easily overheard through the flimsy wooden partition. Leliana was far from prude, but it had been some time since she had… anyway, the racket was getting on her nerves. She suspected that Zevran somewhat overdid it for her benefit. Either that or the Siren's captain was damn _good_, and, well… she really did not want to think about _that_.

To make things even better, the rest of the crew appeared to be model their behavior on their captain's antics, and Leliana now figured that every darned Rivaini, male or female, was an oversexed lunatic who would not take no for an answer and would keep propositioning her until she assassinated the lot of them. Which, come to think of it, might be achieved with a single dose of deathroot in the rum barrel...? Not that Leliana would actually resort to such means, but Maker, was she ever _tempted_…

Leliana closed her eyes and took a deep breathe, taking in the salty breeze and the smell of the ship, tar and old oak and the rancid aroma of the lone oil lantern on the deck. She wondered what it would feel like to be an elf, to see and feel with razor-sharp senses. Vague memories of her dreams flickered into Leliana's mind, but those were the dreams of a god, and her conscious mind could not process the intensity of the _other's_ sensations. The memories receded regretfully, and Leliana opened her eyes to stare at the night sky, marveling for a moment at the cold, poignant beauty of the stars.

A faint creak of wood: light, naked feet treading the deck behind her. Leliana turned to face the newcomer, her hands coming to rest very close to the handles of her twin daggers. Although she and Zevran has paid a very handsome price for their passage, Leliana had only limited trust in Isabela's intentions, and would not be overly surprised should the sultry Rivaini decide that Zevran's ministering was getting old and that her passengers would fetch a good price on Llomerynn's slave market.

If the privateer sensed her tension, she didn't let it transpire at all as she came and and rested her elbows on the ship's rail, inches from Leliana's, her dark eyes peering into the inky blackness of the Waking Sea. Leliana relaxed a little when she realized that the privateer was unarmed – there might be pointy implements under that short, form-fitting nightgown of hers, but they would have to be _really_ well-hidden.

"Nothing like the sea breeze to cool down after a good workout", Isabela murmured without taking her gaze off the night ocean.

"I am sure," Leliana replied rather coldly, gathering her cape around her. The wind was actually a little too cool for her taste; but then _she_ had not had the benefit of a good workout, and the past four days had been the epitome of dull as the privateer ship sailed uneventfully, staying at a decent distance behind the Orlesian galley which transported Nyx and her captors. Shortly after their departure from Jader, Leliana and the Rivaini captain had discussed the possibility of overtaking the galley and preceding it in Val Royaux, but Leliana was not totally sure that the Templars would disembark in the Orlesian capital, so she had decided to keep following her quarry until they were in sight of the city. The chase was made easy by the intense maritime traffic along the Orlesian coast, which assured that the privateer ship's presence would not raise any alarms among the Templars. Still, the long wait was killing Leliana.

In fact, she reflected, it would be nice to draw her daggers and go through a few bouts with the privateer; to work out her pent-up aggressiveness and see if the duelist was as good as she claimed to be. Watching the tiny beds of perspiration on the privateer's neck, Leliana smirked internally at the double-entendre that seemed to plague her thoughts. _Oh yes, it would be nice to test Isabela's dual-wielding skills, to shed some sweat together and see just how good she is. With a mind like that, it is a wonder that I managed to survive in a Chantry for two years… _

"So what's your story with Zevran," Leliana asked, more as an attempt to take her mind off of the Rivaini's brown, well-muscled body than out of any genuine curiosity – actually, the words had hardly passed her lips that she regretted asking, since any story of Zevran's past was likely to resonate strongly with the parts of her life that Leliana had killed and was struggling to keep buried.

"Ah yes, Zev. I hope our little adventure doesn't make you uncomfortable?" Isabela quipped, turning a mischievous smile to Leliana, "I would have asked you to join us, but Zev informed me that you are some kind of nun."

"Zev said… Yes, I have taken the… the sacred lay sisters' vows, and I can't… er… that is to say, _escapades_ are not allowed."

Isabela shook her head with a slightly disapproving look, her eyes trailing on the bard's breasts unabashedly. Leliana swallowed hard. "You Andrastians have such brutal customs. Unhealthy, too…" she purred, "We Rivaini consider it a sin against Nature to starve our body or to deny its... _other_ essential needs."

"Well, Andrastians have somewhat similar views," Leliana blurted, "it's just that the definition of _essential_ may vary a little. So, about how you met Zev?"

"Ah yes, our gorgeous elf friend. He killed my husband a few years ago." Isabela smirked at the look of alarm in the bard's eyes. "Zev saved me the effort of doing it myself, really. My lord and master and I were not on the friendliest terms when Zev's blade… cut our union short, so to speak, although _I _was not the one who ordered the hit."

"I… See. Another Rivaini custom?"

"More like standard practice in our chosen walk of life", Isabela said in a surprisingly cold voice, the seductive inflections now discarded for naked, brutal frankness: a businesswoman talking about her trade. "A ship is like one of those Fereldan mabari: it will only serve one master. A crew with two leaders is a mutiny waiting to happen." She turned a humorless gaze to the bard, and Leliana wondered how much Zev had really told her about her past. "We all do what we must, don't we?"

"Yes", Leliana replied in an equally cool voice, "but sometimes we regret those things we do."

"Only if we allow regret to catch us, sweet thing… But enough about my late husband's misfortune. I have a question too, if you will indulge me?"

"You can always ask," Leliana said in a tone that made clear she did not promise anything.

"I am curious as to why a Chantry… what did Zev call you again… _sister…_ seems intent on freeing a Grey Warden from the hands of those very Templars who are sworn to protect her faith?"

The question did not take Leliana completely off guard; in fact, she had been entertaining similar reflections for a long time, ever since the beginning of her relationship with the sorceress. Unfortunately, there were no simple answers.

"Well, maybe the Templars and I have a difference of opinion about that person," Leliana murmured after a while, "or maybe not all Andrastians agree on the best way to serve the Maker's will."

"So you believe you are doing some… _king of the gods'_ bidding?"

_Leliana stands on a mountain, the darkness overwhelming the world below her. Blood squirts onto Marjolaine's pink bed. Zathrian and the Lady of the forest writhe in the blood mist. A god's maw gapes in the darkness. _

_The rose in Lothering. The Archdemon's broken form on the rooftop. Nyx's hands catch Leliana on the edge of death. The sorceress falls through dark ice. _

_We stopped a Blight together. Nyx stopped a damned Blight. How could this not be the Maker's will? _

"Yes," Leliana simply answered; and hoped she was not lying to herself.


	15. Chapter 15: Divide and rule

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Divide and rule**

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* * *

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Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx (and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game). I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Diane smirks as Philippe runs past her, calling her name and poking around Chateau Cheneau's impeccably tended garden. She has found a perfect hiding place inside a cone-shaped box tree, and she spies her brother's unsuccessful attempts at finding her with a hint of contempt. Father swears Philippe will some day make a great chevalier, but as far as playing hide-and-seek is concerned, the heir to the Pellerin estate is an utter slob, quite unlike Diane, who is immensely gifted for stealth, languages and manipulating her entourage.

Diane knows what will happen next, but she still tries to warn her brother when the commotion erupts in her mother's boudoir on the first floor of the vast stone edifice; she tries to steer her own body away, but she is a mere spectator of a scene she has seen so many times in her nightmares. Diane can only watch as her eleven-year-old self runs to the chateau's terrace and slips on a slick red puddle. Diane knows that the fall saved her life: the abomination's claws missed her head by less than an inch, and the ravenous thing moved on to other victims. Diane remembers that waking minutes later among the mangled corpses of the Pellerin's retinue, and she knows that the thing wearing the tattered remains of her mother's dress was caught hours later in a nearby farm, and put down by the Templars.

For now though, the carnage has faded into the customary darkness – Diane knows that this marks the end of the nightmare, and that it is time for her to wake up, pray and regain composure. However, things take a new, unusual turn and instead of waking, Diane finds herself walking once again in the geometrical alleys of the chateau's garden. Only this time, the garden is shrouded in palpable darkness, the rotting trees twist imperceptibly to watch her, and the Presence stalking her is infinitely more lethal than any abomination.

Diane runs and struggles to wake up, for she is one of very few dreamers who knows the exact meaning of the darkness, as well as the nature of the Presence that she feels drawing closer. She is also one of even fewer mortals who know what will happen if she is caught, and there is no comfort in this knowledge.

Something grabs Diane's arm -

* * *

Something grabbed Diane's arm, and she jerked awake with a little relieved whimper, instantly regaining her stern, almost royal bearings. Still, this was no dignified position for a Grand Inquisitor to be caught in, especially in the Empress's antechambers, and Diane was painfully aware of many pairs of eyes fixed on her, none of them belonging to a lesser noble than a marquis.

"Your Holiness? Do you need anything?" Helena's whisper was as low and deferential as circumstances required, but Diane caught the underlying concern in her assistant's tone. _Foolish girl_, she thought. _As though those ribbon-trimmed bastards were not already thinking of ways to exploit my moment of weakness. _

Diane scowled at the dozen courtiers seated in the round, gilded room, separated one from the other by gracefully sculpted screens and fluted columns. Wigged, elegant figures smiled and nodded politely, wary eyes shining in faces that were painted with exquisite renditions of their families' coats of arms, a fashion that had the Empire's powerful noble houses fighting covert wars over the best makeup artists and the richest paints, most of which included extravagantly expensive ingredients such as pulverized rubies or fresh drake sperm. Like so many things in Val Royeaux, the fashion bore the mark of Empress Celene's subtle bid for absolute power.

Even the layout of these antechambers, Diane thought, acted as a reminder that Celene could have chosen "Divide and Rule" as her motto. The waiting courtiers, those happy few who had intrigued for weeks or years for the privilege of an audience, were seated in a wide circle on extremely uncomfortable, gilded stools, each in their small, exquisitely decorated alcove, unable to talk much with their neighbors, but in plain sight of most other petitioners. It was no accident, either, that the palace's master of protocol often arranged for sworn enemies to seat face to face in tense silence while they waited to bore the Empress with the details of their petty intrigues. No voices were ever raised, for that would not have been _polite_, but if looks could kill, the place would have seen more death than the riverside scaffolds.

The double doors of the antechamber opened, and Diane heard the painted nobles shift on their stools and gasp discreetly as a new petitioner entered the room. Painted faces gawked at the short, black-clad figure that glided through the room, pausing to curtsey to every nobleman with respect so deep, it bordered on the farcical. If Diane had allowed her face to betray any emotion at all, she might have looked shocked, and a little amused too, at seeing the man thus traversing the antechamber – and showing absolutely no sign that he would ever take a seat and cease his so-respectful salutations.

As it were, Diane was here in the Empress's gilded waiting room on official Chantry business, and her face was a mask of marmoreal dignity as the stocky figure –the newcomer's shoulder span was pretty much on a par with his body height- stopped before her and bowed even lower than he had for the Duc de Val Firmin.

Diane eyed the man with a glacial look from her tiny rodent's eyes. He was short for a human, tall for a dwarf, and way beyond robust by any race's reckoning. In spite of her curiosity, it would not do to dignify him with a nod – for the one who stood before her was a heathen, a malefactor, and not even fully _human_.

Brown, slightly slanted eyes glistened ironically, and the half-blood straightened up after his deceptively clumsy, overly complicated curtsey, no doubt calculated to make him come across as an inoffensive, almost comical character, forever handicapped by his brutish Dwarven ancestry. Officially, the half-blood was a poet, one of those parasitic entertainers who thrived amid the pomp and corruption of Val Royaux's high society, and Diane had indeed glimpsed him on a few occasions, at official receptions where he had been let in to corrupt the audience with his verse and wit.

But if the Inquisition's informants were to be believed, and they were hardly ever wrong, appearances were deceiving as far as the mongrel was concerned. Diane had required frequent update on the man's _other_ activities; tellingly, the quantity and quality of information obtained by her spies was woefully low.

The ivory doors to the Empress's audience room opened silently, and the Grand Portier, a tall scarecrow of a man wearing a jewel-studded livery that was once the best part of an Antivan prince's ransom, called the man's name in a low, dry voice:

"Monsieur Desrochers, Poete a la Cour."

The half-blood bowed apologetically and waltzed into the Empress's salon, leaving the haughty nobles shocked at the breach of protocol, and the Grand Inquisitor pondering why Celene chose to parade one of her master spies in front of her.

* * *

"_Orlesian_ Templars? Here in Denerim?"

Loghain's voice, thick with incredulity, had taken on the grating quality that, to Anora's ears, indicated that someone was in trouble. For now, the object of her father's wrath was the Grand Cleric of Denerim, who incidentally appeared to be one of few people alive who could withstand Loghain's angry stare without wetting themselves. The old priest ignored the onslaught of tiny daggers pouring out of the Hero of Ferelden's eyes and addressed her explanations to the Queen.

"Your Majesty, the Denerim Templar contingent was all but decimated during the sack of the city, and the recent outbreak of plague means that Templars are desperately needed. The Orlesian contingents are merely meant to reinforce the Fereldan troops; the locals will still outnumber them two to one."

_In other terms, a thirty per cent increase in the Templar garrison, all fresh from Orlais._

Loghain opened his mouth to say something, but Anora patted his arm gently, in a gesture that was both affectionate and a reminder that _she_ was in charge.

"Ah, yes, the plague," Anora said coldly, "could Your Holiness remind us of the… logical link between this unfortunate disease and the Templars? Are we talking about a magical illness? Do such things even exist?"

From the corner of her eye Anora caught Loghain's approving nod; he might have formulated his question more bluntly, but Anora had gone to the core of the problem in her own cold, efficient idiom.

And the question was rather urgent. While the death toll was still modest compared with the great plagues of yore, there hardly passed a day without cries of anguish resonating through the ruined streets, announcing that the plague had claimed another victim from the capital's already battered population.

Moreover, what the disease lacked in sheer numbers, it more than made up for in strangeness. It was now commonly known as the Archdemon's curse, and wild rumors ran amok in Denerim's refugee camps, made all the worse by the inevitable tales of talking darkspawn and five-limbed calves. The Chantry's insistence that Templars oversee the disposal of the dead, and some vague rumors of the summary execution of the not-so-dead, only amplified the city survivors' paranoia. Add to this the crushing misery left behind by the horde, and you had the sort of social climate that riots were born of.

Anora had _not_ been through widowhood, Blight and imprisonment just to lose her kingdom to some freakish disease, and the Chantry owed the Crown answers.

The Grand Cleric cleared her throat, seeming strangely uneasy for a person who incarnated the country's salvation.

"The Chantry's official position is still that we do not know enough about this plague, Your Majesty. However, it is not unreasonable to believe that it is somewhat related to the recent Blight, and may therefore not be an entirely natural phenomenon…"

"With all due respect, Your Holiness, the Templars did not do much to fight the darkspawn when they were at our doors," Loghain intervened, "that burden has rested on the Grey Wardens' shoulders since times immemorial."

"I am most grateful for Ser Loghain's history lessons, _recently acquired_ though his convictions may be", the old priest countered with a hint of irritation, still addressing Anora, "but this does not mean that the Chantry must not strive to help its flock whenever possible. Can anyone deny that the Templars are the best organized and most qualified corps for dealing with what may be a magical curse?"

"What about the mages?" Anora asked softly. Not unexpectedly, the Grand Cleric frowned in shock and anger.

"You cannot seriously consider fighting evil with _more evil_? The mages cannot be trusted with the care of the believers, and I will not allow…"

"This is not your decision to make, _priest_," Loghain snapped, "and you will address your Queen properly, lest you wish to be shown the way out."

The Grand Cleric bit her lips in a visible effort to remain calm. When she spoke, it was in a measured, controlled voice that only made her sound more threatening.

"I apologize, Your Majesty. I must however inform Your Majesty that the decision to garrison Templars in Denerim, and to allow them to deal with the plague outbreak, emanates from the Divine herself, and cannot be legally challenged by temporal authorities."

"You mean that it is not _customary_ for the Throne to challenge such decisions, I take it?" Anora asked lightly, "because as far as the _law_ is concerned, I am positive that there is no text backing up this assertion."

The old priest nodded reluctantly, acknowledging Anora's superior awareness of legal matters.

"Indeed, Your Majesty, only custom and common sense dictate that the Throne and the Chantry refrain to interfere in each other's affairs. May I ask then how Your Majesty proposes to deal with the plague?"

"Obviously the Crown cannot do much unless we understand what we are dealing with. Does the Chantry really know nothing of the nature of the plague?"

"Nothing more than speculations about the Archdemon's curse. But Ferelden is not alone in this predicament, Your Majesty. Orlais and the surrounding nations appear to be affected as well. This is why the Chantry seeks to reinforce Templar presence in all major population centers."

Anora closed her eyes and reflected for a few instants. News of Nyx's deportation to Orlais had reached her within days of Wynne's visit, and recent messages addressed to Loghain from the Grey Wardens' Orlesian headquarters suggested that trouble was brewing between the Wardens and the Templars. While Anora did not wish to antagonize the Chantry, she was shrewd enough to understand that something was amiss; vital information was being withheld from her, and she did not like being kept in the dark.

But maybe Anora could use the situation to her advantage.

"Your Holiness, I am going to accept your gift of Templar reinforcements to help defend Ferelden", she said, smiling at the smug expression that appeared on the old woman's face. "However", she continued wryly, "I _want_ these troops to be stationed in the Arling of Amaranthine, where I am sure they will be invaluable in helping with the plague and supporting the establishment of a Grey Warden stronghold. This way, if the plague is indeed connected with the darkspawn, we will have a _splendid_ joint force at the ready."

_And more importantly, she continued mentally, the Orlesians will be staring at each other at a respectable distance from Denerim. _

Anora watched with some satisfaction as the Grand Cleric swallowed her objections and made a dignified, if unhappy, exit from the royal apartments– it had been one of the old lady's privileges to bore and lecture Anora countless times, before and after her marriage to Cailan, and she was mildly amused by this chance at petty revenge.

"We will hear more from her in the near future", Loghain growled; pride and a grudging respect mixed on the old warrior's features as he addressed his Queen and baby daughter.

"The old bat is not used to contradiction," Anora agreed, with the wide, impish grin that only Loghain, and sometimes Erlina, were privy to. "We should send a messenger to the Tower. Let us see what the mages think of this plague."

* * *

"She's going to enter the harbor."

Leliana accepted the spyglass from Isabela's hand and studied the galley's maneuver. The ship's trajectory did seem to be directed towards the mouth of the port, although to be honest, the bard's skills did not extend to matters nautical, and she could only trust the Rivaini's judgment. They were very close to the Templar ship now – Isabela had ordered changes of sail and pavilion several times during the last nights, ensuring that their quarry would not be on alert. Leliana could make out sturdy, armored forms standing still among the busy sailors. She scanned the galley's deck for a smaller, lither figure, to no avail: Nyx was probably held indoors. The thought of the elf being locked up in the hold for days left a bitter taste in Leliana's mouth.

Beyond the Templar ship's white sails, the white towers and red-tiled roofs of the Val Royeaux glistened feebly in the distance, silhouetted in stark contrast against the green and ochres of fields and vineyards. The city was an island of stone hovering at the confluent of land and sea; shining high above all this sculpted glory, the vast golden dome of the Great Cathedral sparkled like a miniature sun. Leliana's mind was a mess: the excitement of the chase now cohabited with a surge of almost painful happiness and a deep, slick undercurrent of panic. This was the place where Leliana had grown, loved and suffered. After years of exile, the bard was _home_, and none too sure whether she wanted to dance in joy or scamper in fright.

"Can we dock before them?" Leliana asked with a voice that quavered only a little.

"Sure. The Siren can be there two hours early; more than enough time for us to give harbor officials a fat tip and for you to prepare… whatever you want to do. My crew and I do not need to know about that."

Leliana nodded. Whatever plan she and Zevran came up with, the privateers would not be part of it. Putting aside loyalty issues, those men were used to open combat and would only be liabilities in an infiltration attempt. Leliana's thoughts drifted to Louis. She would be not able to reach him within such a short time frame, and even then the man was as likely to stab her in the gut as to help her.

Definitely a last resort, she concluded glumly. No, for now Leliana would have to hope that Nyx's escort would feel secure enough in the Andrastian capital that they would lower their guard and allow for a quick, bold move by two desperate rogues. At least she knew the terrain intimately, she thought with a little rush at the idea of treading Val Royeaux's streets once more. In a sense, she now realized, Leliana had always hoped that it would come to that: a return to her origins, a last showdown to decide whether she could overcome her past, or would finally be devoured by the city that had nurtured and maimed her.

That was _if_ Zevran really followed her to what may be their bloody end, she thought as she surreptitiously studied Zevran's face, tanned to an almost glowing brown by the sun and the sea breeze. His hair was now brown as well, thanks to certain ingredients Leliana had acquired during her short trip to the Tower of Magi – the place's apothecary was a real treasure trove if one knew what to look for. The Antivan had momentarily adopted the persona of a buccaneer, which apparently meant that he got to wear a head scarf with his usual multi-pocketed leathers.

Leliana's hair was a sunny blond, and knotted in piggy tails that had Zevran smirking every time she opened her mouth. That, plus some artfully applied makeup and fake tattoos, made her look like your typical up-and-coming mercenary– just before she was sold into slavery to a sailor's brothel, Zevran had tastefully added. Leliana would probably change appearances a few times in the coming days, but this mask was rather appropriate for the docks area– and she knew for a _fact_ that Val Royeaux's brothels were actually pretty safe places to be around.

"Val Royeaux, Jewel of the West, world capital of _non-Antivan_ wines and racy underwear", Zevran declaimed mockingly. "So, how do we plan to rescue the damsel in distress?"

Leliana sighed. If only things were as easy as drafting a plan and dancing through it in a choreography of see-through lingerie and pointy daggers. Still, the Antivan's lighthearted chitchat helped her feel a little less scared of what may come to pass. Like the fact that she might have to kill Templars – defenders of the Faith- before the sky went dark. Leliana felt her insides knot at the idea and hurriedly suppressed the thought.

"The problem is", she started hesitantly, thinking as she talked, "the problem is that we have no idea of the route they will take after they disembark. We can only make an educated guess as to their destination."

Zevran waited patiently for her to continue. He was already well aware that they were pretty much working under the worst possible conditions, and did not seem overly worried about it. Leliana strongly suspected that for all his talk of retirement, Zevran relished the opportunity to use his skills. Fighting alongside the Warden had given him the opportunity to kill, but most of it had been open warfare, not the subtle game of assassination.

"So…" Leliana whispered, her brow creased in concentration as she stared at the slowly approaching coastline, drawing a mental map of the city that lay far on the horizon, "we must assume that the Templars are taking Nyx to the Redoute, their stronghold on the Clairaigues embankments *. If they want to go fast, they will follow the riverside. After that Grey Warden incident, we will assume that they want to be discreet, so they may go through the smaller streets in the old town… We can probably discount the alienage and the dwarf quarter, those are not the safest places around. That leaves us with the Fishbowl."

"The Fishbowl? Is this a particularly filthy name for the red light district?" Zevran asked with a hopeful look.

Leliana laughed softly. "Not quite", she replied, "the quarter was named for the old fish market in it, and it is home to many artisans, most of them perfectly respectable. It consists mainly of low buildings with narrow streets and canals - "

"Rooftops", Zevran murmured approvingly, "you want to hit them from above?"

Leliana frowned. "Either that", she said undecidedly, "or we could just mount a distraction ahead of them and snatch Nyx in the confusion."

Zevran shook his head impatiently. "That would only be an option if we knew their exact route", he said with unusual harshness, "and we are dealing with _trained warriors_. Even with smoke bombs and the advantage of surprise, there is simply no way we will make this omelet without breaking eggs. Are you prepared to see this through, or shall we just head for the closest tavern and drink to our clean conscience?"

Leliana felt her cheeks flush at the elf's condescending tone. "I am just trying to figure out the best option!" she spat.

Zevran shrugged, his trademark half-smile once again playing on his lips. "No, you are trying to eat your cake and have it too", he said in a softer voice, "and you will get us both killed unless you quit fidgeting and make up your mind".

Leliana ground her teeth to contain the anger she felt rising, boiling just below her throat, threatening to erupt in a torrent of abuse... All directed at one of very few people she might venture to call friends… And pretty much the only person who could help her now.

_Closing her eyes, Leliana remembered to breathe. Breathe in, fresh air, breathe out, useless anger dissipating in silly, puffy pink clouds. Funny, she thought, how some of Marjolaine's tricks reminded her of the Chantry's teachings… Banish anger, pride, anything that stands between you and your goal. _

_In one case, the death of men. In the other, spiritual enlightenment. It all boiled down to priorities, to what one wanted most. _

"All right," Leliana murmured through clenched teeth, "we hit them from above, and we give no quarters."

* * *

Diane stepped into the palace's outer courtyard with the all the calm of a volcano just before it blows its cap. Helena scuttled nervously after her.

The interview with the Empress had not gone particularly well for the Grand Inquisitor.

As expected, Celene had grilled her thoroughly about the plague, complaining about the Chantry's secretive handling and outright _disinformation_ regarding what was obviously a matter of public safety. Diane had presented her arguments in a clear and hopefully convincing way, explaining that further research was needed to better understand the nature of the disease and its possible magical origins. Celene had then interrogated her about the state of said research, and Diane had been artfully evasive, up to the point where the impious ruler had once again demonstrated her vast talent for malice.

This time, the demonstration had been at the Grand Inquisitor's expense, and it had taken the form of a large cage draped in fine, red velvet, that was rolled in at the Empress's request. Diane had only slightly flinched when the "poet" - who had spent most of the conference pretending to "record the Empress's divine art of ruling for his upcoming play" – had sauntered to the cage and unveiled the sullen abomination inside.

To Diane's credit, her face betrayed absolutely no emotion when the thing with blazing silver eyes and misshapen claws smiled – if you could call an exhibition of ragged silver hooks a _smile_- and started chanting something in an obscure language. Nor did Diane betray her dismay when the pedantic fool of a "poet" theatrically consulted his notes and declared the language to be ancient elvish, and the few known words in it to contain "most exotic" references to certain "devourer", or "dreaded master", which were sure to form a thrilling basis for an epic – or perhaps a _caper_?

The Empress had concluded the interview by _suggesting_ that reports of all Chantry investigations into the plague be filed with the Palace within the day, and added that it was her pleasure to assist in the disease's containment by stationing five additional legions of Chevaliers within Val Royeaux's walls, so that the Templars would not need to bother calling in more reinforcements. In fact, Celene was so worried about the situation in the countryside, that not a single additional Templar may now be admitted within the Orlesian capital.

Oh, and there was also the small matter of the Grey Wardens formally protesting the incarceration of one of their affiliates; would the Grand Inquisitor be so kind as to look into this?

In other words, Diane thought, the inbred bitch was dreadfully aware of many of the Light Bearers' schemes, even though she would probably struggle for a long time to connect the dots.

Diane's carriage, emblazoned in gold with the Light of Andraste, was waiting for her in the Palace's courtyard. The Grand Inquisitor jumped onboard with an agility that was not usually associated with priests, and reclined on the fine leather seat with a little grunt. She may have to deal with the half-blood; not that he or his mistress mattered much. When the day of reckoning came, Diane thought, Celene's childish attempts at covert warfare would make little difference.

_The higher they sit…_

_

* * *

_

* AN: I just made up a name for the river, because I can't find its name on my map.


	16. Chapter 16: Homecoming

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Homecoming**

_So, life had been busy of late, hasn't it? I shall try and move this story forward nonetheless, but will beg for your patience, gentle reader..._

Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx, Louis and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game. I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

Leliana crouched at the edge of the roof, all senses on alert. The bard was both intensely focused and almost painfully aware of Val Royeaux's sea of red-tiled roofs, of the cool autumn breeze, the sun caressing her skin, the stench of the port, and the joyous, almost overpowering buzz of a city that truly never slept. Leliana had fought back tears when the Siren had docked in _her_ city, then a sort of exhilaration had taken her over as she made her way through the port and searched for a vantage point to spy the approaching galley.

There was more to her current state than the mere excitement of being home, though. As the Siren caught up to the Templar galley and slowly left it behind, Leliana had physically felt Nyx's proximity wax and wane. For lack of a better word, she may have described the feeling as being more _alive_; the sensation was as undeniable as it was unexplainable.

Now Leliana knew without a doubt that the sorceress was very close, somewhere on the now-immobile galley. She watched and waited while the ship's crew helped dock workers unload cargo and haul in supplies, their silhouettes small but very clear thanks to Isabela's spyglass.

A small, hooded silhouette emerged from the ship's rear cabin, and Leliana's heart jumped in her chest as taller, armored figures surrounded the prisoner, herding her – the prisoner's head was covered, but it _had_ to be Nyx- across the deck. Leliana cringed as the small figure's foot caught into something and a Templar grabbed the prisoner's arm roughly, shoving her forward. The bard felt a surge of rage and panic at the display of brutality; an ugly thought, carefully repressed throughout the long journey, raised a blind, clammy head.

_Calm down. Those are Templars, not common guards. _

"Here they come", she whispered.

"Ah, finally. I thought they were going to spend the night in there," the elf sighed. Zevran had spent the last hour or so re-arranging poison flasks and various bladed implements in his many pockets. Leliana suspected that his fidgeting was not so much professional thoroughness as a way of coping with the boredom of the wait.

Horses were waiting for the Templar escort on the quay, but just as Leliana had expected, the prisoner was made to walk between the horses. Leliana knew it all too well of the common practice of having prisoners and criminals walk through the streets, hanging their head in shame. In the case at hand, the custom allowed the rogues to easily keep up with their quarry as the Templars slowly made their way through the port's raucous crowds, then through the increasingly narrow, winding streets of the Fish Bowl.

_Something was off. _

At first Leliana did not pay attention to the growing, creeping feeling; it was too vague, too weak, and she was utterly focused on the chase, jumping catlike from roof to roof, trying to figure out her prey's next move, calculating the probability that the Templars would first reach each of the potential ambush sites that she and Zevran has scouted out previously. But the further Leliana ran, moving ever closer to the inevitable confrontation, the more that strange feeling crept on her, until she could no longer refuse to acknowledge it. The bard abruptly stopped running and closed her eyes.

Leliana felt Nyx's presence, moving somewhere in the imperial city. The sorceress was like a nurturing light, drifting across the bard's perception… _Drifting_…

Leliana swore under her breath and whistled softly to get Zevran's attention. She saw a light of incomprehension in the assassin's eyes as she started running again, in a markedly different direction. There was no time for explanations. There was no time at all, Leliana knew, but she still had to try.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ Leliana's wits had been dulled by the exile, the long years spent in meditation and self-pity.

_Stupid!_ Marjolaine would have laughed at her mistake, and then given her a hearty flogging to teach her better.

_Stupid! _Leliana was guilty of complaisance, guilty of underestimating her target, those simple-minded Templars whose wit was no match for hers; never mind that Amelia and the ambush on the road should have taught her better.

_When you fear pursuit, use a decoy. _

The fastest path between two points was a straight line. Like the nearly straight line of water that glistened before Leliana's eyes; the broad, calm river where a low, thin boat dashed on the water, propelled by eight rowers who pulled on the oars like their lives were at stake. Leliana did not need her spyglass to know that a small, hooded figure would be seated at the rear. Leliana could _feel_ Nyx speed away, moving ever closer to the sharp towers and jagged battlements of the Redoute, to the quay where a host of white, armored figures waited.

After a while, Leliana stopped running, and through tears of rage, saw the steel gates swallow the sorceress's tiny silhouette.

* * *

"Ah, child, We are so grateful for your help…"

Divine Marguerite's fragile voice trailed off, the deep-set, rheumy eyes growing distant, and Diane waited patiently for the most powerful woman in Thedas to recover from one of her frequent, and entirely regrettable, spells of absent-mindedness. It was truly unfortunate, the Grand Inquisitor mused, that the once-brilliant scholar and leader must now be reduced to this withered, nearly mindless shell. But Diane found comfort in the knowledge that unlike many who wore the Chantry's sacred robes, but truly lost their heart and soul to worldly pursuits, Marguerite would ultimately find her way to the Maker's side.

Not right now, though. The Light Bearers still had use for a domesticated Divine, and the elixirs Marguerite was fed daily fortified the body even as they slowly walled off the mind.

"… What were We saying?"

Diane smiled, pleased that the interruption was over so soon, and spoke very slowly.

"The Grey Wardens, Your Supreme Holiness. They have petitioned the Empress about some trivial matter. They make the entire Chantry look bad. They are good people, but so tragically misled. Won't you show them the righteous path?"

"Grey Wardens… Good people, yes… Very, hmm, very polite… What do you propose?"

"I have prepared an Edict, Your Supreme Holiness. It intimates that some… unruly mage… is now wholly under Chantry supervision. Please sign here…"

"Ah, hum, what's this… Oh, _Nyx_, is it? Funny name… Tevinter, We take it?"

The Divine took great pride in her reading skills, which, considering her age and heavily medicated state, she bloody well _could_. Watching the most powerful woman in Thedas valiantly plod through the document, Diane considered asking the dear old lady's physician to cripple her sight, but decided against the unnecessary cruelty. For now_._

After all, Marguerite had been like a mother to Diane, and the Grand Inquisitor was no _monster_.

"I believe so," she said softly, "although the sinner is an elf, Your Supreme Holiness."

"Oh, hum, elf, huh?" the Divine's jaw quavered in concentration. "My parents had elves", she finally articulated, little tears forming at the corner of her eyes, "Annoying little folks, the elves… always complaining."

"Indeed, Your Supreme Holiness. And your seal here… there you go, thank you so much, Your Supreme Holiness. Now who's ready for tea and pudding?"

* * *

Louis had a problem.

In fact, Louis had a _shitload_ of problems, and a whole lot more were on the way. He knew that his discovery of the silver-fanged lunatic in the dirtiest tenement of the alienage, and the subsequent farce he had played at the expense of the Grand Inquisitor, marked the beginning of a dangerous escalation in the chess game between the Empress and the Chantry. Louis was but a rook in the game, a captain on the frontlines of a covert war, and he entertained few illusions about his life expectancy. But then people in his chosen line of work rarely worried about that. Fishmongers, clerks and nobles worried about life expectancy.

_Poets, traffickers and spies: not so much. _

No, for now Louis was worried about his upcoming play, _Flemeth of the Wild Heart_, a tragedy in five acts about the legendary witch. Louis' dramatized take on the witch included a long monologue by Flemeth's villainous husband, debating the relative values of lust and sentiment as he prepared to slay his wife's lover. Louis had been struggling with the damned monologue for weeks, and still it wasn't right…

"Louis?"

"Huh?"

"Are you _composing_ while we fuck?"

Liquid blue eyes stared at Louis from above Papillon's creamy white shoulder, arched back and wonderfully round, taut bottom. The young human bard did not look amused.

"Hardly, dear."

"What do you mean, _hardly_?"

"That it is _hard_ not to feel inclined to poetry when faced with such a royal piece of ass," Louis lied as he gently stroked the object of his supposed admiration.

"Maker, this has to be the cheesiest line I have heard in a while," Papillon groaned.

"Louis, there are some guys… Oh." Marteau froze on the doorstep of Louis' luxurious bedroom. "Salut, Papillon," he said with a large grin on his broad dwarven features.

"Andraste's tits, Marteau, you ever heard of _knocking_?" Papillon chided as she rolled away and deftly draped herself in a sheet, leaving the poet fully exposed, although not too embarrassed – Marteau and Louis went way back, to the time when they ran for the Dwarven gangs in Little Kal Hirol. Now Marteau means _hammer_, and the gruff-looking dwarf _was_ in the habit of knocking, just not on doors, so he just nodded in answer to Papillon's rhetorical question.

Seeing his afternoon nap irremediably ruined, Louis sighed and poured himself a shot of "brandy" from an elegant crystal flask set by the bed. At least the liquid _looked_ like brandy; it was in fact elfsbane, a decoction made mostly of discarded elfroot peels macerated in cheap schnapps. The foul-smelling tonic helped grind through a day's work providing one did not mind a vengeful migraine; for this reason it was wildly popular among Val Royeaux's poor. Louis had been addicted to the stuff since a very young age, and playfully referred to his vice as going back to his roots.

"So, Marteau my man, what is it that justifies stomping into my bedroom and ruining a perfectly good, ah, training session?" Louis asked jovially before downing the liquor in one swig, his eyes instantly watering from the alcohol's sharp bite.

"Perfectly good's relative," Papillon snorted as she slithered into her unmentionables, the blue wings tattooed on her back stretching a last time before they were covered by a silk bustier of the same color.

"Spoken as though you weren't the _trainee_, my sweetest butterfly," Louis replied good-humouredly.

"Oh, so when do we get to the _good_ stuff, professor?"

"How about: when you can handle it, o delightful child?"

"Well," Papillon cooed as she laced her corset, "my Templars seem to think that I handle them pretty well, I you catch my drift, o pimp extraordinaire."

"My blue-winged angel, your _drift_ is about as subtle as a war galley preparing to ram," Louis sighed while he examined his reflection in one of several mirrors artfully disposed around the bed, "And as a matter of principle, jealousy will not work on me… Huh, did I get fatter or what?"

Marteau glanced at his boss's thick layers of muscle and none-too-thin love handles, cleared his throat noisily and offered his medical opinion.

"Keep drinking this shit and being fat will be the least of your worries, human."

"My dear hairball, this excellent eau de vie is what keeps me young and handsome," Louis groaned as he put on loose, grey linen pants, "_and_, my exact title is _mongrel_, thank you very much."

Marteau shrugged.

"'Long as you don't call yourself a dwarf... Anyway, Pelot said there's those two guys asking for you all over town, started at your old quarters in the Crassieres. One's an Antivan. Thought you'd like to know."

"Crow?" There was a trace of interest in the half-blood's slanted eyes.

The dwarf chuckled and started counting on his fingers.

"Elf, check. Pretty boy, check. Tattooed face, check. Tight buns, check. Only lacks' em black feathers up his arse."

"And the other?"

"Human woman, blonde-blue, rather tall, good-looking. Pelot thinks she's a local mercenary, but he didn't get a very good description beyond hair color."

Louis nodded, finished buttoning his shirt and walked to the armor stand in a corner of the room. He didn't wear armor often these days, but the recent developments did warrant some caution, he thought as his fingers caressed the battered dragon skin chest piece, patched here and there with metal plates and thin enough to be worn under civilian clothing. The scars of the armor matched the scars on Louis's body, slash for slash.

"So, anyway, you want me to take care of it?"

Louis shook his head with a little smile.

"No," he murmured, "I need the distraction."

* * *

Zevran was starting to worry. It had been hours since Leliana and he had rented rooms at the back of what appeared to be a restaurant-cum-bordello on the Colline Verte, a nondescript, popular neighborhood set on one of several mounds overlooking the sea of red roofs that was the Orlesian capital. Once their lodgings had been secured, Leliana had taken him to the neighboring Crassieres, the much seedier district where she hoped to meet some friends from her troubled past life as a bard. When Leliana and Zevran had arrived to their destination, the bard's old acquaintances were gone, and she had stared at the burnt-down building with what appeared to be a strange mix of sadness and relief.

Now, after asking around half-heartedly for a while, Leliana seemed to wander the streets aimlessly, pausing here and there to examine the goods on display on artisan stalls and answering Zevran's attempts at conversation only in short, atonal sentences that were rather unlike her.

Zevran believed he understood the rationale behind the seemingly erratic walking around. Since tracking down the ruined building's former tenants was likely to prove a long, difficult task, the bard was just making sure that her asking and poking around didn't go unnoticed; in other terms, if Leliana could not find her friends, she would let _them_ find her.

Logical though the process might seem, it was anathema to Zevran. The Antivan's way of life revolved around being as discreet as a mouse in a house full of cats. Zevran was used to approaching his mark unnoticed, striking from the shadows, and being gone long before the alarm was raised. Offering himself as bait, allowing himself to be noticed, tracked and treated as a known quantity, made him nervous to say the least. While Zevran's exterior remained as smooth as ever, his inner landscape was in serious turmoil; little alarm bells rung in his head every time a passer-by so much as glanced at him.

There was something else troubling Zevran, although in his current state of paranoia he could not afford to give it too much consideration. When Leliana and he had finally stopped running after the failure of their rescue attempt, the bard had fallen to her knees – fallen was not the right word, Zevran thought; _crumpled_ was more like it, the tall, athletic woman had seemed to shrink, to lose some of her substance. The bard had stayed prostrate for several minutes, unheeding of his attempts to shake her out of her desperation spell. After a while the crisis had passed, or so it had seemed, but even now as Zevran followed Leliana through narrow, winding streets encumbered with peddlers selling every kind of goods ever known to mankind, the assassin could not help noticing the change that had occurred in his companion. The bard's shoulders were a little slumped, and her step was a little heavier, as though this last slap from destiny had robbed her of some of her former grace. Something had been broken in the bard, something almost imperceptible but essential, and Zevran didn't like to see her thus broken.

In a sense, Zevran reflected, it was a paradox. There ought to be some satisfaction in the knowledge that Nyx was now beyond help, locked up in a fortress guarded by hundreds of holy warriors. After all, the sorceress herself had suggested, none to subtly, that he might be happy to feel in her shoes, and Zevran was not one to deny his urges. If he just hung around for long enough, there was an excellent chance that the bard would seek solace in the only friendly arms she now had at hand. Zevran was practically in Leliana's pants. Apparently, that made him mad.

Zevran was mad at Nyx for what she had said and done back there in Denerim, and especially for the way she had left Leliana behind. Zevran was not privy to every detail of the story, but he would not soon forget the terror in the bard's eyes as she ran from the abomination in Fort Drakon's stairway, nor the whistling of the arrow. And now Leliana's reward had finally caught up with her. The sorceress had broken her puppet, and good old Zev was welcome to play with the discarded toy. For some reason, Zevran found that his newly acquired, embryonic self-respect bristled at the idea.

In the end, it was a pity that Zevran had not succeeded in his attempt on the Warden's life and left stinking Ferelden to the Blight. By now, he would be in sun-drenched Antiva, enjoying the finer things in life in company of like-minded fellows whom he didn't give a damn for, and who in return would not so much as raise an eyebrow when he finally outlived his usefulness and was disposed of. _That_ was Zevran's fated lot, what he had been raised and trained for; and who was he to try and change his own destiny? Nobody, that's who he was, and he was perfectly fine with it.

Bards, mages and friendships, Zevran reflected, were entirely too much trouble. And it was not like he hadn't tried his best to help; no one could _blame_ him for leaving now. In fact, Zevran didn't even have to face Leliana's stuttering, mushy goodbyes; the redhead's awareness of her surroundings had dropped to such criminal levels that he only needed step into a side alley and walk away. Whatever happened afterwards was not his responsibility. Zevran was quite fed up with playing babysitter and bodyguard to a damaged, incompetent bard. Zevran had gold, charisma and talent; the Orlesian capital was but a fine whore waiting for his embrace. What did he care if the redhead's body was found floating facedown in a canal…

Twelve feet to Zevran's left, a local pickpocket sized up Leliana's purse and moved towards his blissfully unaware target, then froze when he felt the Antivan's cold gaze on him. Zevran raised an eyebrow, and the cutpurse backed off with a small, respectful nod; a cat had flashed its teeth, and the mouse was thankful for its mercy.

_Tomorrow_, Zevran decided. Tomorrow, he would talk to the bard, and if she did not listen to reason, he would leave her to her folly. Having momentarily made peace with himself, Zevran picked up his pace, hurrying to catch up with Leliana, who was examining a pair of embroidered shoes with the same dull, slightly dazed expression she had worn for most of the day.

He never saw the half-blood coming.

One instant, Zevran was striding through the bazaar, his attention distracted for less than two seconds by the sight and scent of three young, pretty things, who eyed him appreciatively in return as they brushed past him; next thing he knew, the half-blood had helped himself to his personal space and practically planted his flag there. Zevran's first impression of Louis was that of an arm thicker than his own thigh coiling itself affectionately around his shoulder, a sharp contrast to the decidedly unfriendly, needle-like blade that came to rest against his ribs after slicing neatly through his leathers. A deep, sarcastic voice rang in his ear, speaking in horribly accented Antivan.

"Welcome to Val Royeaux, _amico mio_. I would recommend keeping your hands well away from your body, and avoiding fast movements, yes? Poisoned blades have a will of their own. Now let us walk together, I would like to stay within sight of your companion."

"You know, if you are interested in the lady, buying us a drink would have yielded excellent results," Zevran offered, turning his head very carefully; he was surprised to find that the man's head was about level with his own. Under a large-brimmed hat adorned with rooster feathers, slanted brown eyes glistened ironically at the assassin. The broad, thick-boned face could be best described as a disconcerting mix of features.

_Half-dwarf,_ Zevran thought. _Brasca, they had to sic a freak on us._ The man nodded, as though he was well aware of the reaction he caused in others, and his expression hardened slightly.

"I believe I do not need to introduce myself, yes? So may we cut to the chase? Which of the masters sent for me this time?"

Zevran smiled pleasantly as he pondered over the mess he was in. He had first thought the half-dwarf a hired hand, mere muscle in the service of one of Val Royeaux's underworld players. Now the man's words pointed to another direction, and this was good, because it meant that he might spare Zevran's life, providing that Zevran could offer the exact mixture of lies and truths that would meet his expectations. After all, he thought, this very strategy _had_ worked once in the past…

Even as they trod lightly through the bazaar's crowds, Zevran noticed that the three lasses that had previously distracted him were now zeroing in on Leliana, each of the girls adopting a distinctly different gait and persona, their perfect coordination all but imperceptible to the untrained eye. Zevran glanced at the low rooftops and was not surprised to catch a hint of movement.

Whoever those guys were, they did not leave much to chance.

"Believe it if you will," Zevran said lightly, "I do not actually have the pleasure of knowing your name. But allow me to introduce myself properly: Zevran Arainai, formerly of the Antivan Crows. May I attract your attention to the word: _formerly_…"

The half-dwarf smirked and the stiletto drew a tiny, perfectly controlled circle over Zevran's liver, scraping the skin lightly without piercing it.

"A _retired_ _Crow_? I so love it when people treat me like a stupid brute…" The man's lips drew very close to Zevran's ear, as in loving confession; in other circumstances, Zevran might even have enjoyed the proximity. "Can you guess why?"

Zevran didn't even have to think; he knew the answer intimately, having himself played the role of the weak, subservient elf countless times.

"I would say the look on their faces when they realize their mistake?"

"A splendid guess, my black-feathered friend. You _are_ almost too smart for a Crow."

"Which is exactly why I left my old employers and came looking for work in beautiful Val Royeaux," Zevran lied lightly, "but perhaps _you_ could use my talents, yes? I and my beautiful friend are very good at solving problems, Ser… Ah… I didn't quit catch your name?"

"Stop fucking with me, Crow." The half-blood's mask of politeness fell, and Zevran caught a glimpse of the ruffian beneath: harsh, uncouth, _angry_. The man spoke, and each word further accentuated the feeling, until Zevran was reminded of Jarvia in Dusttown, the casteless ghetto in Orzammar that made Antivan alienages look like fairy tale gardens.

"Let me tell you how things work. You don't drop your master's name, I'll just kill you both. Then your heads will be packed into a crate and delivered to a random tavern in Antiva City, just like all Crows that tried their luck on _my_ turf. Your choice, duster."

_And I wonder what you'll do with our heads after I do tell you_, Zevran completed in his head, _perhaps mail them to a more specific address?_ _Brasca. This is going nowhere._

"Fine," Zevran sighed, "the Crows don't pay nearly enough that I'd risk torture for them. The master's name is… LELIANA!"

Zevran's sudden shout, coming from an assassin in a crowded street, surprised the half-blood enough that he froze for a second, or so Zevran thought at the moment. The Antivan twisted inside the man's hold, throwing his head into his opponent's face and seizing on his armed wrist. All of which, he soon realized, were perfectly sound moves, and would no doubt have been pretty effective had the half-blood not weighed nearly twice as much as he did.

As it were, the man seized Zevran by his long hair and threw him off almost gently, sending him sprawling onto a heap of wicker cages containing live fowl. Through the daze of the fall and a small tornado of frenzied feathers, Zevran saw the black-clad form of his attacker rush, shouting in Orlesian, toward the faraway spot where Leliana danced between three lithe, dagger-wielding forms. An instant later the poultry's outraged owner was on Zevran, and he promptly rolled away from a broomstick onslaught, accompanied by the cheers of the crowd.

Throwing a handful of coins to the irate merchant, Zevran ran through the gathering crowd – Orlesians appeared to regard knife fights as yet another pleasing distraction in their fine city– and froze at the unexpected scene before him.

Of the three dagger-wielding fighters, one was sprawled on the ground, clutching an obviously broken leg; she was attended by a dazed-looking girl who, judging by the big bruise on her face, would need a moment before she was fully there. The third assassin, Zevran noticed, had palmed her short knives, concealing them against her blue dress, but eyed Leliana with an expression that said that things were not finished between them.

Leliana and the half-blood stood face to face, staring at each other in utter silence. The bard had not drawn her blades, and the man's stiletto was nowhere to be seen, but the tension between them was palpable as they eyed each other, waiting. Zevran was sure that when the signal came, they would be at each other's throat, tearing at each other with their bare hands if needed.

Finally the man smiled, and touched his hat in a small, familiar salute.

"Red," he said simply. By his side the blue-clad girl inhaled sharply, her face a mask of almost comical surprise.

Something passed on Leliana's features, a flicker of old grief, and she averted her eyes.

"Red is dead," she murmured.

"And yet here you are, my red princess, just as war descends on us," the half-blood murmured, "but let us not speak of these matters now. We have given quite the spectacle here, and should retire behind the curtain for a while."

Leliana nodded, and she and Zevran quickly followed the half-blood's lead away from the bazaar and through a maze of alleys and courtyards; the girls and the half-glimpsed silhouette on the roof went their own way. Neither Leliana nor the man said a word; Zevran's attempts at pleasantries were met with impatient glances from the former, and absolute impassivity from the latter. Never one for gloom and doom, Zevran busied himself by remembering the intricate path they followed and taking note of the locks and climbing spots encountered.

After a while, the half-blood stopped before a big, dilapidated building towering above a weed-infested courtyard. Zevran thought of a joke about the splendors of the Orlesian Empire; then the worn door opened silently, manned by a gruff-looking dwarf with a shaggy beard, and Zevran stepped into an entrance hall worthy of a ducal palace.

The half-blood turned to the companions.

"Welcome to my humble abode", he said, bowing theatrically. Then, softly:

"Welcome home, Red."


	17. Chapter 17: Brothers and sisters

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Brothers and sisters**

Foreword: Dragon Age, Leliana and related lore/ characters belong to Bioware - Thanks guys for an awesome game. Me? I simply claim paternity to Nyx, Louis and, as folks say, all that you don't recognize from the game. I am having fun writing this.

Feedback always welcome!

* * *

In the Redoute dungeon, Nyx forgot about the meaning of days.

There was no sunlight here; there had been none since the Templar fortress's foundations had been laid by the riverbanks, centuries ago. There was no night either as far as the sorceress was concerned, just the perpetual gloom of the sparsely-lit room where she was caged. The only reliable indicators of the passage of time, Nyx had found out, were the sentries' shifts and the refilling of oil in the lamps.

Every two shifts or so, the mage would come.

Nyx didn't know the mage's name, and she did not ask, because it was unimportant. From the few words he spoke, she understood that the mage was a servant of the Templars, and had been conscripted from Val Royeaux's Circle. Judging by the sickly, almost translucent quality of his skin and by his fearful demeanor, Nyx suspected that the man was a prisoner, and had been so for a long time.

The mage always came in accompanied by at least five Templars, in addition to the three holy warriors who perpetually stood guard over Nyx, their stare as cold and unblinking as dead men's. For during the mage's visit, Nyx was let out of the cage, to be examined and fed potions foul or fragrant, then bathed in healing magic until she felt nauseous and her raven hair almost flowed to the floor, her nails curving like a hawk's talons. Then the Templars cut the newly grown tissue down to more manageable length, and herded Nyx back to the cage, where she would eat, shit and sleep and wait for the mage's next visit under the Templars' vigilant gaze.

Sometimes the mage's visits took a less pleasant turn, and in those instances he was accompanied by a dark-skinned, bald man wearing exotic, intricately ornate clothes. Nyx had lost all sense for magic, but she remembered well the Tevinter blood mage in the alienage, and the rush she had felt when she fueled her power with his blood. This man could have been his younger brother. The Templars seemed more nervous than usual when the Tevinter man was around, although he never performed any magic.

He did, however, like blood a lot. Nyx's blood, more specifically.

Sometimes the Tevinter man would just prick Nyx's fingertip, and squeeze out a few drops into small vials he carried away with him. Lately, however, the dark man seemed impatient; the needle had been replaced by a scalpel, and the vials had become jugs, and the pale mage's healing power had been seriously strained.

Nyx supposed that something was wrong with the dark man's experiments. Whatever he expected to find in her blood wasn't there, or more likely, wasn't _quite_ there. Nyx had her idea about what the problem may be, but she wasn't about to spoil the surprise. And Nyx still didn't understand her captors' plans; wasting time and resources trying to restore her power, and her link with the Dread God, didn't seem like a very Andrastian thing to do. Nyx didn't know about the plague, or about the furtive, silver-eyed figures that now started to gather in the dark corners of the land. The Wolf-Born was still asleep, even as the Wolf shook His dark mane in the shadows of the Grey Forest, testing His might against His bonds.

Increasingly, Nyx felt Leliana's presence close to her, moving, praying or sleeping in the vast city beyond the thick walls and the soggy earth. The bard's life force was like a candle moving behind thick curtains, its light diffuse and barely visible, but felt nonetheless.

Increasingly, Nyx could feel Leliana's emotions, vague and fleeting flashes illuminating the dead sea of her own consciousness. In those moments, the sorceress remembered what it was to _feel_, and the grief and rage that this knowledge brought made her grit her teeth in the cage. In those moments, she almost wished that Fen'Harel's power were restored to her, so that the tunnels under the Redoute would resonate with the roar of fire and the shrieks of the damned. Oh, how she would burn the men and their cage...

The cage. Nyx had heard Templars refer to it as the Archmage's pen. It was ancient, and just big enough to accommodate a bedroll and a chamber pot. The cage was wrought of thick blue steel, strong enough to contain a bronto, but that was not why she had been placed in it. Along the steel bars ran thin spirals of faintly glowing, almost living metal. The workmanship was undeniably Dwarven, a formidable masterpiece of enchantment that must be worth a king's ransom. As an added precaution, the feet of the cage were paced in a flat, broad pool, and clear water flowed in and out through an ingenious piping system. Nyx supposed that the water ensured that the cage would not overheat and roast its inhabitant in the presence of overpowering magic.

The cage and its masters, Nyx understood, were eagerly waiting for her power to return, so that some great and mysterious goal may be completed. To the Tranquil mage's lucid mind, both the cage and its masters were pathetically irrelevant. If the Templars were foolish enough to believe that their little enchanted pen could hold a god, Thedas was in for a gargantuan surprise.

Curled on her dirty bedroll in a fetal position, Nyx forcefully drove the roughly cut nails of her withered hand into her palm. After the last two healing sessions, she had started to notice a change in the sensation, like the return of a very old and much hated friend.

_Pain. Pain, and a promise of darkness._

The treatment was working. For the first time in weeks, Nyx felt a pang of fear that didn't belong to Leliana.

* * *

"Hail in the Maker's Light!"

"Hail, Brother Gilles. I take it that you bring good news?"

Grand Connetable Gilles du Marais, supreme commander of the second most powerful armed force in Orlais and warrior extraordinaire, resisted an impulse to squirm under the Grand Inquisitor's restless gaze.

"Good news… ah…" he stuttered, and was immediately interrupted by the bald Tevinter man at his side.

"Cow dung, Sister Diane," the dark-skinned man cut in an incisive, dry voice, with hardly a hint of a foreign accent. "Rien, nil, nada. The subject's blood has failed to induce a satisfactory reaction in any of the samples I brought. More samples are on the way from the site, and I still have some material to work with, but frankly, I fear we are running out of time."

Diane's frown sent a shiver down Gilles's spine. Under the thin eyebrows, the rodent eyes were always in motion, observing, taking notes, appraising. _Judging_.

"It's that _mage_, Sister," Gilles articulated laboriously, "his healing tricks are nothing like what he flaunted, or maybe he's holding back, or…"

Diane dismissed the grand Connetable's excuses with a flicker of her small, dry hand.

"Brother Gilles, you have authority to enlist and direct any mage in _Thedas_. Use it. Enlist a whole Circle if needed, but do not come whimpering to me. If you need something, _anything_, name it. Understood?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" The clang of Gilles's armor resounded like a thunderclap in the Light Bearer's underground chapel as the Templar saluted, swiveled on steel-clad heels and strode away through the tunnels. Diane waited for the racket to alleviate and turned to the Tevinter envoy.

"What do you think, Umbra?" she whispered softly.

"Replacing the healer is worth a try. I'd suggest a team of no more than four, pumped full of lyrium for extra potency. But…" The dark man shrugged.

"But, brother?"

"There is something wrong about the blood itself. It's not just the subject's Fade connection. Would you like to see it?"

Umbra did not wait for Diane's answer; he strode confidently to the small altar where he had placed a small, ornately embroidered pouch, and carefully started unpacking its contents. In no time, two little vials stood on the smooth white stone under the Light Bearer's symbol.

The first vial was full of a deep red liquid.

The contents of the second vial represented all that Diane had ever lived for. Under that fragile glass shell lay the key to Thedas's salvation, a tiny drop of a mercury-like substance, iridescent and animated by the slow pulsation of life. Fascinated, Diane moved her hand close to the vial, and the viscous substance rolled towards her outstretched finger with the slow, deliberate motion of a blind animal.

The thing was lonely, and beautiful, Diane thought dreamily, reaching for the vial. Umbra gently touched her hand and Diane started awake, jerking reflexively away from the substance.

"Do not look at it directly," Umbra murmured softly. "I told you what happened to our scouts, didn't I? It is always hungry."

Diane straightened up, consciously battling her fear and repulsion. She was the Order's leader. Sometimes, if you handled it right, Pride could actually be an ally…

Plunging his hand into his bag, Umbra deftly extracted the last component of his experiment, and in Diane's opinion, the most crucial one. The acid vial.

"Now watch, Sister," Umbra murmured as he uncorked the vials. Working quickly and efficiently, he poured a few drops of blood onto the living metal at the bottom of the third vial, and immediately grabbed the acid flask, ready to intervene.

It started as a faint glow, turning into a warm golden light as the viscous liquids melded; Diane thought that she also heard a faint humming, like a distant, weak echo of a song. There was something poignant to it, an alien and incomprehensible beauty, and tears welled up in her eyes. For an instant, Diane thought that they had succeeded, and she felt her heart soar, the words of the Chant forming on her lips.

Then the light in the vial suddenly died out, and things went very _wrong_.

Tiny, black globules formed in the murky solution, and the ethereal song degenerated into a subsonic growl, heavy with a malice that made the hair on Diane's arms stand on ends. Thin, hair-like tendrils sprouted from the roiling, expanding liquid, and Umbra hurriedly filled the vial with acid. A weak mental screech rose, grating on Diane's nerves. Seconds later, the bubbling dissipated, and the metal at the bottom of the vial lay still and lifeless; Diane was thankful for it.

"Did the other's blood do anything like this?" she inquired in a low whisper.

"No," Umbra answered dreamily, "only the Wolf-Born's. It's quite unexpected. I think the process starts fine, but then the blood just… I don't know, kind of dies off, as if it lacked the strength to fully assimilate the Essence. What you saw at the end was the result of the awakened Essence reacting to the darkspawn taint: not a pleasant reaction."

"What do you think would happen if you let it go unchecked?"

Umbra shrugged. "Who knows," he said in a perfectly unconcerned voice, "perhaps the Essence would just consume the darkspawn taint, like it does of living things, and go back to dormancy. Or perhaps not. I do not want to take that chance, not unless we _really_ grow desperate; do you?"

"No," Diane admitted with a shadow of a smile, "no, I can't say I do."

* * *

Leliana gracefully stepped down from her carriage and examined the square, imposing mansion that housed the Grey Wardens' Orlesian headquarters. The bard was dressed to please the eye today; nothing overly suggestive, but a form-fitting green dress which exposed just the right amount of skin to give her an edge in negotiations.

Slumped by the mansion's elegant front, a tiny elven beggar was singing for alms, drawing disgusted or compassionate looks from the brightly colored crowd of the diplomatic quarter. Under the filth and the rags, Leliana recognized one of Papillon's _little wings_, the mottled assortment of street-hardened girls, most of them former whores, who formed the younger bard's network. Leliana wasn't sure whether to be grateful for the backup, or wary of Papillon's intentions. Louis's latest muse seemed to know a great deal about Leliana's past, and exhibited a territorial instinct that made a blighted spider seem warm and fuzzy. If Leliana knew anything about Louis's tastes, Papillon must be as lethal as a whole _nest_ of the critters.

Today's assignment was part of a string of small operations mounted jointly with the gang – the half-blood was too shrewd to try and order Leliana around, but she and Zevran were effectively working for him, gathering information and, Leliana suspected, getting up to speed with Val Royeaux's latest developments so that Louis and his gang would be spared the long, boring business of enlightening them.

Convincing Louis to help had been too easy, especially considering the circumstances of their last meeting. The half-blood had an angle in this, of this Leliana could be certain. Louis lived by one golden rule, learned from Dwarven cartas when he was a child: _a favor calls for a favor_. By her own reckoning Leliana was more or less in his debt when she had left Val Royeaux, and his current generosity was a little more unsettling for it.

Then again, Orlesian bards' only real rule was that _there was no such thing as a rule_, and Leliana had long ago renounced to understand Louis's inner workings. The man could seem as transparent as a crystal glass one moment, and as opaque and convoluted as a crystal glass full of leeches the next. To be fair, he probably did not understand himself much better. The contradictions were part of what made his charm, she supposed, and were also what made him such a dangerous bastard. At any rate, Leliana was sorely pressed for allies, and would take any help she could get.

A doorman wearing the griffin emblem of the Wardens let Leliana in, and she followed his directions up elegant marble stairs and arched galleries, finally stopping before a sculpted oak door. Leliana had never before entered the Wardens' headquarters – the venerable organization was a little beyond and above a bard's common assignments – and she found this first contact rather disconcerting; the subdued elegance of the place contrasting starkly with her memories of the previous months, of _her_ Warden's pathetic lack of coin and recognition as she fought to stave off the Blight. With a silent prayer, the bard rasped lightly on the well-polished wood.

The door opened within seconds, and Leliana entered the office, a small, stylishly furnished room, encumbered by rows and piles of books, scrolls and maps. Leliana vaguely wondered what a Warden Commander in Val Royeaux could do all day long. She supposed it mainly had to do with recruitment and politics.

The man was tall, with slicked whiskers and the broad, imposing countenance of a born warrior. He smiled to Leliana, a mischievous smile that made him appear younger than his years. She wondered how long it would be before he left the world of light for a last, terrifying incursion into the darkspawn-haunted deep. She thought of Nyx in the Templars stone fortress, and her voice quavered imperceptibly as she introduced herself and her purpose.

Her request was as daring as it was simple, and she still did not believe that she was pronouncing the words. _Unlawful imprisonment of a Grey Warden. Grave mistake of the Templar order. Assistance in a clandestine operation_. There was not a chance that the plan would ever work; the Grey Wardens would throw her out and call the guard.

Sighing, the Commander produced a parchment sealed with the golden wax of the Chantry.

"Sister," he started in a soft, surprisingly high-pitched voice with the cultured accents of Orlesian nobility, "I regret to inform you that per edict of the Divine, blessed be her Holy Name, Nyx of the Ferelden Wardens is effectively placed under Chantry supervision. I won't bore you with technicalities, but the Divine's authority does supersede Weisshaupt's."

Leliana nodded. She had expected nothing from the Wardens anyway. Nyx had received no support whatsoever from the Order during the Blight; what help could she expect now?

"Thank you very much for your time, Commander," Leliana murmured as she turned to the door. There was much to be done.

"I did not dismiss you, sister," the Commander said sternly. Leliana turned in surprise, her hand on the doorknob.

"Why do you call me sister?" she asked quietly. "I do not hold such a title, not since I left the Chantry, long ago."

A thin, grayish eyebrow arched quizzically.

"But… You are a Fereldan Grey Warden, aren't you?"

"Me? No," Leliana chuckled with a hint of bitterness, "no, good Ser, I am just one of the Warden's _very few_ friends…" Something snapped inside the bard, born from the frustration she had endured at the hands of this Commander who called himself Nyx's brother, but would not lift a finger to help. Leliana's voice rose, filling the small room with rich, modulated accents as she shifted to a storyteller's tone.

"… One of her companions, Milord, and the one to pen the tale of her exploits. Prithee, gentle Ser, wouldst thou listen to the legend of Nyx? It is a sweeping tale of power, love and sacrifice, and one that surely must end sadly…"

Leliana started singing before the embarrassed Commander, her clear voice rolling down the Warden headquarters' grand stairways and solemn halls, and as she sang she heard the shuffle of feet outside the door; discreet at first, then more insistent, accompanied by whispering voices. Their approach was like the coming of a tide; as Leliana neared the end of the song – and how would it end, she wondered, if not in abandonment and death- the door behind her opened, and silent figures filled the room, big and small, clad in armor, rags or robes. Dozens of eyes glinted with a feeble, vaguely unnatural sheen, but they were not fixed on her.

Behind his gilded desk, the Warden Commander shifted nervously, fidgeting with the thin tips of his moustache. He looked… annoyed, for sure, but also strangely relieved. There was mutiny in the air, and Leliana knew that sometimes, being relieved of one's responsibility could be a blessing. Still, she dared not hope for anything but a chance to vent her grief.

_"Then walls of stone, doors of steel swallowed my Warden,_

_Urthemiel's victor, leader of elveth and men,_

_Of Dwarves the ally, savior of Ferelden;_

_To dark prison she went, and never seen again."_

Leliana's voice broke, and she turned to the door, reaching blindly through tears. A frail elven woman was in her way, and before the bard could say a word, the elf threw her arms around her, hugging her gently. Then the woman stepped back, without a word, and it was a rotund dwarf, clad in rich brocade, who held Leliana in solemn embrace.

One by one, the Grey Wardens embraced Leliana, and the Commander's frown gave way to a resigned expression, with perhaps a hint of amusement thrown in.

Planting himself squarely before the ornate desk, the portly dwarf plucked his pipe from a braided beard and raised a bushy eyebrow.

"Commander?" The dwarf's deep growl sounded less like a subordinate's request, and more like a Proving challenge.

"Ah, sod it!" The Commander laughed out, throwing his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender, "but I wash my hands of this, you hear me? If a few Wardens get drunk and accidentally trespass on Chantry property, it will be their private business, and the Order will do nothing to rescue their sorry asses. Understood, you bunch of rebellious nitwits?"

The Grey Wardens' cheers shook the very walls of the mansion, and Leliana's strangled squeaks of "Thank you, thank you so much" were lost in joyous din.

_Perhaps,_ Leliana thought, _perhaps_ _the Maker was finally listening._

_

* * *

_

Leliana's nerves were sorely shaken when she left the mansion after profusely thanking the rambunctious crowd of Wardens, promising to be back soon with plans for Nyx's rescue, and politely declining oft-repeated invitations to get drunk. _Drunk!_ Leliana already felt light-headed enough; the pavement under her feet felt mellow, and the tiny needle of her emotional compass whirred furiously between tears and laughter. Somewhere in the bard's brains, the little voice of reason peeped feebly, warning her that her euphoria was no better than her previous gloom, and that what she needed above all was rest.

Shutting off the voice of raison, Leliana hailed a passing coach and shouted an address. Rest could come later; there was much to do.


	18. Chapter 18: Tea time

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Tea time**

Bioware owns everything but Nyx and Louis: those are mine, my own, my precioussss…

_Flashback alert - I am tentatively introducing fragments of Leliana's past throughout this chapter, although I am unsure how it will work out with the overall frame. Gentle reader, do let me know if the format becomes overly complicated. _

_

* * *

_

She lies on a bed of fragrant moss, her bruised limbs trembling of exhaustion, her divine mind all but annihilated. In this moment, Andruil the undying is mortal, lost in the long aftermath of her little death. By her side, her Lord's powerful mass shivers, spent, as helpless as a newborn cub. For a short, blessed moment, the gods have let go of their mantle of power, and shared the secret truth of their being.

Slowly, Andruil's consciousness returns, and with it a tidal wave of power rises through the forest, informing its denizens great and small that the truce is over, and that the supreme predators are back. Pride, love and fear fleet through the Huntress's mind as she rises to her feet, garments of woven light once again enveloping her loins. Behind her, the magnificent shape of her Lord arises, his brown skin absorbing the last rays of the setting sun. Now is the hour of the wolf, the time of his hunt.

"Behold what Andruil caught today," she exclaims in jest, "none other than the son of Night, the mighty father of wolves. A fine prize for the Goddess of the hunt."

"Do not mock me, daughter of Elgar'Nan," her Lord growls softly. The Wolf Lord's voice is a death threat to all creatures, but for her, he tunes it down to a more accommodating purr. Andruil feels his gaze on her, and she knows that the yellow, savage eyes are pleading. She dreads the words that must come.

"Will you bear the child, my Lady?" He asks softly, almost timidly.

"The Father will not…" She starts, like she has done countless times. But this time her Lord interrupts her, the mind-growl that arises from him anything but gentle, and the forest shivers at the coming of the storm.

"I will _not_ abide by Elgar'Nan's edicts, daughter of my enemy. Too long has he kept me exiled, but no more. For he wanes, and I grow."

"He is still the All-Father, and King of the gods," Andruil murmurs bitterly.

"He is not father to _all_ gods, and there is another who may rightfully claim the crown of the Sun. Or have you forgotten, my Lady?"

She feels her Lord's hands on her shoulders, and she does not resist when he gently spins her around. The yellow eyes capture Andruil's gaze, pride and passion shining over depths of hidden knowledge. It has come to this: the Wolf God is rising, and she must choose a side. Andruil looks at her Lord's pleading face, and she knows that she will not deny him. But it is not in the Huntress's nature to give in without a fight.

"Then Andruil will be yours," she whispers, "_if_ you prove worthy…"

Before he can reply, she is on him, plucking the strings of time as she moves. Her attack catches the Wolf Lord off-guard; hawk-like talons rip through divine flesh, and he flies with a howl of pain, through a mist of blood and pulverized tree trunks. Andruil leaps after him, fast and gracious, altering her mass mid-jump so that when she lands, the impact will burrow him into the damp, red earth.

With a rumbling challenge, the Wolf Lord blurs, shifting, sliding microseconds back to a more advantageous position. When Andruil's talons rip into the soil, The Great Wolf's maw snaps around her waist, crushing through hastily erected layers of protective magic. Divine blood splatters the Wolf's black fur; he shakes his opponent like a rag doll and spits her onto the ground.

A second later, Andruil is on her feet; snarling, magic shivering about her like crackling wings.

"Don't you dare hold back, Nightson! Earn me, or lose me," she spits.

The terrible maw opens slightly in reply, the shadow of a smile.

"I love you, Lady of the Hunt," he purrs, and hurls his mass at her, deadly fangs snapping about as she narrowly evades.

"Trickster," Andruil murmurs fondly, a humming spear materializing in her hand.

The thunder of the gods' mating fight is heard throughout the land, shaking the mountains, rolling over the distant seas and echoing faintly through the Old Wyrms' underground sanctuaries. In the highest spire of Arlathan, silver-haired Mythal bows her head in sorrow.

* * *

"Hey, Lady, we're there!"

Leliana snapped from the vision and found herself staring at the coach driver's ruddy face. All around her Val Royeaux hummed like a great, sleeping beast, the frenetic activity of the afternoon now ceding the way to the quieter, but no less earnest, pursuit of food and pleasure. Soon, Leliana knew, loving night would hide the scars of time on the Imperial capital's stone facades, and the city's lights would shine like the huge, bejeweled web of some divine spider.

Leliana took a deep breath, smiling at the friendly stench. The short nap had rejuvenated her some, and it felt good to be home. Leliana threw a copper to the driver and hopped above the open carriage's door, offering appreciative passer-bys a quick flash of legs. She took a minute to study the facade before her.

_Le Repos du Lion_'s facade was as austere as it got in a city where nearly every square inch of stone was covered in elaborate sculptures, at least as far as the rich quarters were concerned –poorer neighborhoods being a different beast altogether. The few decorations were simple and religious in nature, a rather common occurrence in the few surviving buildings that predated the Empire's flamboyance. Leliana smirked at the building's owners little joke; for the _Repos_ was one of Val Royeaux's most venerable bordellos, as well as a passable eatery. It was also, Leliana reflected, a landmark of sorts for Louis and her; the choice of the rendezvous was surprisingly sentimental – or, more likely, an unsubtle reminder of what she owed the manipulative bastard.

Leliana opened the door –

* * *

_Leliana opens the door and scurries through the marble-paved entrance hall, the cheap lute clutched against her worn shirt. She hopes that Madame Renaud didn't notice her being late, but as she prepares to slip into the changing room, the mama's voice booms behind her… _

_

* * *

_

"Leliana!"

Leliana spun at the sound of Zevran's voice, noticing the slightly inebriated quality in it. She noticed that the assassin was clad in brightly colored silks that showed he'd done some shopping between his assignments; Leliana smirked at his disastrous attempt at aping local fashion. If the Maker smiled on her, she thought, someday she would take Zevran and Nyx to see a _real_ tailor.

The Antivan bowed deeply, before eyeing Leliana appreciatively from head to toe.

"Green suits you well, bella. To think we'd ever visit an Orlesian whorehouse together… It's a wink of destiny, yes?"

"Oh, Zev, are you thinking of sharing your affections with other ladies? I am offended," Leliana replied with a pout, "and I thought you a gentleman…"

Zevran tsked. "Isn't sharing a cardinal virtue in the Maker's sight? And I never said anything about _ladies_. Why, your painted noblemen are literally walking _oeuvres d'art_."

Leliana giggled. "They _are_ pretty," she replied, "until you happen to upset their wig. Then they start crying, and their makeup gets all smudged, and before you know it they've turned into Flemeth's little sister."

"Such a shame, I did like those wigs," The Antivan sighed as they made their way up the marble stairs towards one of the bigger suites on the second floor, "I suppose you often wore one, along with the face paint?"

"It depended on the occasion," Leliana started, her blue eyes sparkling at the remembrances, "sometimes I'd pretend to be a servant girl, or sometimes a noble. Sometimes we'd paint our faces, and sometimes…huh…" she interrupted herself with a hint of embarrassment.

"Do elaborate," Zevran asked with a wide grin, "sometimes?"

"Let's just say that makeup artists can paint more than just your face, shall we?" Leliana replied with a shade of pink on her cheeks, "but I am sure you can find out for yourself in this very house. Preferably _after_ I'm done here," she adds as she pushes the door and steps into the room –

* * *

_She steps into the room, feeling cold in the incongruous Tevinter tunic and toga that the mama insists her musicians wear. The tunic is too short, and she would like to tug on it, but her hands are full with the tea tray and the lute. She tries not to look at Jeannette and her customer and scuttles to the bedside table, lays down her tray and pours tea according to traditional Qunari form. The balancing movement of the teapot mirrors the motion of the brunette's head._

_

* * *

_

"Ah, Red, it's so good to see you!"

The room had been refurbished; the furniture smelled of fresh wood, and the carpets were the wrong color, but it was the same room. Bottles and cold meats were laid out on a table big enough to sit six or seven. Louis stood in the midst of the room, staggering slightly. Behind him, Papillon threw Leliana a venomous look, and the redhead felt a pang of annoyance mixed with pity. Leliana thought she'd better watch her glass tonight; or better not drink _at all_, as it were. Marteau was nowhere to be found, which surprised her.

Louis sauntered over to where Leliana stood and handed her a glass full of sparkling wine, which she took reluctantly -

* * *

_She hands him the cup, taking in the strange, angular face, the bull neck emerging from a grey silk shirt. She feels as though she should know him, but she cannot remember where from. She sees a flicker of surprise in the slanted eyes, and when his fingers brush her hand, she gives him the steely gaze that has kept her out of trouble so far. He nods, a half ironic, half respectful smile playing on his lips._

_

* * *

_

"I hear the Grey Wardens were quite enthralled by your performance, my dear," the half-blood said with a little bow, "I am glad to see your talent hasn't wasted away in the cold southern reaches. Here," he added as he raised his glass, "here is to Red, princess of spies, Queen of bards, Empress of seduction!"

"My name," she said through clenched teeth, "is Leliana."

* * *

"_Leliana, Messire."_

_The man has dismissed Jeannette with a more than generous tip for her interrupted ministrations, but bid Leliana stay and play for him. He has spiked his tea with the contents of a small silver flask fished from his breast pocket, and it is all Leliana can do not to wrinkle her nose at the pungent aroma. _

"_Leliana. Leliana…" The man rolls the syllables in his mouth, as though he were tasting a fine wine, "you are talented, Leliana."_

"_Messire is too kind," she says coldly, averting her gaze. She doesn't like the turn this conversation is taking. Life has been hard since Lady Cecile's death, but Leliana has not surrendered all pride; not yet, although she suspects it is but a matter of time. The man– she tries not to think of him as half-blood; Lady Cecile has taught her to judge people on merit, not race - laughs softly._

_

* * *

_

"But of course. Leliana for your friends, isn't it?"

Leliana wondered how much Louis had already imbibed; she had never seen him lose control, but time had a way of changing people... Time, and betrayal. She felt Zevran move closer, the assassin's antennae picking on the tension in the room. Behind Louis, Papillon's liquid blue eyes took on a dangerous glint.

* * *

"_Let me tell you about you, Leliana," he says in a deep, cultured voice as he rises to his feet. "You were not always a bordello musician, playing for coppers in a place you despise. You hate this oh-so-short tunic. You speak with a noble's accents…" _

_He circles her, too close, and she recoils slightly, keeping the flimsy lute between them. _

"… _And, you have a fencer's bearings, albeit a bad one's. Tell me, red princess, are you satisfied with your lot?"_

"_We do what we must to survive," Leliana says bitterly. She had expected sexual advances, but this is somehow worse. _

"_So true," he says as he walks to the door, throwing her a silver as he leaves; "I'll be seeing you, Leliana."_

_

* * *

_

"Louis, mon ami!"

The voice boomed throughout the room, mercifully breaking the tension. Leliana froze as a tall silhouette, draped in a nobleman's rich garb, dashed unceremoniously by her side to embrace Louis, picking him clean off his feet. The half-blood returned the embrace, slanted eyes glinting mischievously above the man's shoulder. Behind Leliana, Zevran let out a little surprised hiss.

"Good to see you, my lord," he started in Fereldan, and the man interrupted him in the same.

"Maker, Louis, you know I hate it when people _milord_ me..."

"Indeed, my lord, but this is Val Royeaux, and I would hate to think that those painful protocol lessons have been in vain," the half-blood replied as the taller man gently put him back down.

"So would I," the man said with an impressive sigh, "your etiquette master almost had me regretting the Chantry…"

"Alistair?" Leliana called tentatively. The man spun around, a confused expression on his face as he detailed her under the blond hair and tasteful makeup; then his brown eyes widened in surprise.

"Leliana?" he blurted.

"It's good to see you, too," Leliana quipped as she stepped to meet the bastard prince, only to be met with the uncomfortable sensation of a small but rock-hard palm being shoved into her stomach.

"Not so fast, Ma'am." The dwarf was very small and tough-looking. Under a big, painful-looking brand, piercing brown eyes challenged Leliana to take one more step towards her charge.

"They're cool, Toast," Marteau informed from the threshold. The small Dwarven bodyguard nodded and gave Leliana a cursory smile as she stepped aside.

"Sorry Ma'am, ya know how it is," she said in the casteless' distinctive drawl before moving back to the door and stepping outside.

"Please don't mind Toast," Alistair groaned as he gave Leliana a heartfelt hug, "Louis's told her that assassins hide in every nook and cranny, and now she inspects my smallclothes every morning to check for scorpions…"

"Hum, does she first ask you to step out of it, I wonder?" Zevran quipped from the sidelines.

"I… _no!_ I mean, yes, I mean…" The former Warden blurted as he turned to the grinning elf.

"You haven't changed a bit, I see," Zevran sighed as he pointedly offered a hand, rather than submitting himself to the indignity of a hug. Leliana pondered Zevran's observation and decided that he was right, mostly, although the ex-Templar's figure seemed to have smoothed over slightly. Of course, the bard reflected, you did not expend as much energy learning the intricacies of Orlesian protocol as you did cleaving darkspawn in twain… Although she suspected that the bastard prince may rather miss the darkspawn; they were, all things considered, slightly less devious than nobles.

"Life seems to have treated you kindly," Leliana remarked, pointing at Alistair's princely attire. The former Warden looked a little embarrassed.

"I guess you could say so; or at least Louis's friends have treated me well. I seem to have officially become Celene's ace in the sleeve in case Anora misbehaves, which means I get to strut around dressed like a peacock and try not to embarrass myself. But mostly I am grateful for the cheese."

Leliana caught on the vague undertone of sadness in Alistair's voice. In offering him a shelter from Anora's afterthoughts, it seemed, she had sent him to a cage, albeit a gilded, cheese-laden one.

But it wasn't as though he'd ever had a choice, Leliana thought; his lineage would have pursued him no matter what. If the recent months had taught her anything, it was that one simply couldn't run from one's past. The thought was bittersweet and strangely liberating, just like the wine in her cup. She drained it in one gulp; she didn't really think Papillon would try something _that_ obvious against her, and she sure as hell would not give her any reason to.

"I am glad to see you haven't changed, my friend," Leliana finally said, "life among the nobility can be… damaging." Her thoughts drifted dangerously close to Marjolaine, and she changed the subject reflexively.

"So," she said with a mischievous grin, "how do Orlesian ladies like you?"

Alistair turned a pretty shade of pink, but the sly light in his eye told Leliana that he was a long way from the Chantry boy she' met in Lothering. Before he could reply, however, Marteau's voice boomed from the corner of the room where he had started a game of drunken spades with Zevran.

"Boy's doin' OK. Toast's been swatting wenches off of him with a broomstick," he informed in slightly slurred accents. Dwarf or no, playing a drinking game with Zevran was never a good idea; or _any_ game, for that matter.

"Fiery temper, that little piece of toast, hum?" Zevran asked innocently.

"_Fiery. Toast._ Hah. Try that line with her, Crow."

Leliana watched in mild amusement as the mention of fire produced its inevitable effect on Alistair.

"So, hum, perhaps I shouldn't ask, but… did you and Nyx… I mean… right, I shouldn't have asked…"

"It's fine to ask, Alistair," Leliana said softly, "Nyx is still very much in my heart, yes. In fact, I came to Val Royeaux to find her."

"Came to Val Royeaux? Nyx's _here_?" The former Templar took a few seconds to digest the news, and then shook his head in incomprehension. "So, huh, why isn't she here with you?"

Louis's beefy arm coiled itself around the former Templar's shoulder in a smooth, affectionate motion that reminded Leliana of a hunting python.

"Yes, about that, My Lord… there's that tiny little favor I'd like to ask of you…"

* * *

_A.N.: Looks like we practically have ourselves a crew here. _


	19. Chapter 19: One for all

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**One for all**

Bioware owns everything you recognize from the game; but Nyx and Louis: they are mine, muhahaha…

* * *

The shackled mages' feet shuffled on the clean, white stone floor of the Light Bearers' chapel with a mournful whisper that wasn't entirely inappropriate, given the circumstances. As for their mouths, they were sewn shut.

They were herded like sheep; the Templars behind them were all Initiates, Light Bearers in the literal sense of the term.

Diane saw Helena shudder in her long white linen shirt, and patted her arm reassuringly. The girl was understandably nervous, but the Grand Inquisitor knew that her faith would not falter. Today, Helena would join the Light Bearers' inner circle, the Maker's very own.

That, or she would join the Maker's side. One could never be sure.

The Templars quietly herded the three mages to the center of the room, forcing them to kneel before the white stone altar. Three was appropriate number for a first Union.

"Remember to keep your eyes shut," she instructed the girl as she motioned for her to climb onto the altar. Helena obeyed, and stood on the cold stone, trembling slightly as she prayed silently.

"Hear the words of Faith: when all sin is redeemed, the Maker shall shine His Light upon this world," Diane chanted in a clear, steady voice.

"FAITH", the Templars answered.

"Hear the words of Valor: The righteous stand before the darkness, and the Maker shall guide their hand," Diane chanted, gathering the Light, her face and eyes glowing faintly.

"VALOR," the Templars shouted.

"Hear the words of Justice: the Wicked shall stand against His Light, and they shall be cleansed," Diane chanted.

"JUSTICE," the Templars roared, and all at once, the Light Bearers let the full glory of the Light shine through their mortal shells. The mages struggled feebly as the small chapel turned into the inside of a star. Blisters formed on Helena's face, and her hair started to smoke, but she kept praying, eyes hermetically shut. In the crucible of light, blinding blades were unsheathed.

"Hear the words of Righteous Wrath: Magic exists to serve Man," Diane chanted, her voice warped into strange octaves by the radiance that emanated from her body, "and never to rule over him."

"WRATH," the distorted clamor came, and the incandescent blades plunged, hissing, through the prostrate victims' flesh. Diane raised a hand as a thin, dark mouth opened in the air before her; a fragile doorway that was also a beacon.

From behind the gate, a roaring protest was heard, and an indistinct, ethereal form started to materialize in the chapel. Diane nodded in recognition; truly, Helena would be blessed with great might, if she could withstand the ordeal.

When the massive, winged figure of Righteous Wrath was nearly formed, Diane's blazing hand shot out, grabbing the spirit's ethereal heart and shoving it through Helena's ribcage in one smooth, blindingly fast motion. The underground chapel resounded with the agonized roar of the spirit, but the young inquisitor ground her teeth and did not cry out. Diane felt their mingled pain radiate through her own hand, felt the spirit's indignation as his immaterial essence was forcefully fused to the fledgling Light Bearer's mortal flesh. Diane felt Helena's agony, felt doubt rise in the young woman's soul, threatening to overcome the fragile flame of her faith.

"Have faith," Diane murmured, "be the Light, child."

Helena's flesh shuddered around Diane's ethereal fist as the young inquisitor struggled to remember the words through the fire of her ordeal; the crackled lips moved, forming the syllables of the Order's credo.

"_We bear the Maker's Light through the Age of Darkness. We stand pure, the Chosen Ones, and prepare His Reign. We wield the Light which shall consume the Wicked."_

Diane felt the Light rise through her newborn daughter's soul, spreading to her body like a wildfire as she drew on the yielding spirit's power. Slowly, Diane pulled her hand away, tears of joy coming to her eyes as she contemplated the renewed miracle that was the birth of a Light Bearer.

"Hail in the Maker's Light, Sister Helena," Diane exclaimed.

"Hail in the Maker's Light," Helena replied in a distorted voice, and the Light shone through her like a fallen star.

Diane motioned for the next novice to be admitted inside the chapel.

* * *

"So tell me about Leliana and Louis," Zevran asked as he slowly and methodically assembled the crossbow. He rather liked working with the gang; with the exception of the Inquisition's agents, they were pretty much at the top of Val Royeaux's underground food chain, not unlike the Crows in Antiva. Their equipment was top-notch, too, and his few assignments with Marteau had resulted in camaraderie of sorts.

"You sure you can take the shot from here?" Marteau inquired, ignoring the question altogether.

If there was one thing Zevran did not appreciate, it was someone telling him how to do his job. The spot was _perfect_. They had a clear shot to the target, and were all but invisible in the shadows between a pigeon house and a chimney.

"My good dwarf, I didn't choose this spot for the vista; that Chantry bell tower we scouted earlier had a plunging view on the sisters' bathroom, yet we're _here_, hmm?"

Zevran finished assembling the giant crossbow; truly it would be a shame to leave it here after his job was done. Although, there was something vaguely romantic in a weapon that was so lovingly crafted for a unique kill; he wondered if the smith had a pretty daughter. He decided that the daughter, and the crossbow, was called Henrietta.

"There, she's ready," he said as he carefully handed Henrietta to his companion, "if you don't mind..?"

Marteau put his foot in the stirrup and pulled with all his considerable might.

"Damn, that's one tough bitch," the dwarf growled as he finished cocking the weapon and handed it back to the Antivan.

Zevran decided to ignore the insult to Henrietta and went back to his initial line of questioning while he set the crossbow on its support, carefully lining up the distant window where his target was expected to appear. When he was satisfied that everything was in position, he lay with his belly on the warm tiles.

"So, you were telling me about those two…"

"Nope. I wasn't."

Zevran sighed. "You are a rather tough nut to crack, my friend. May I ask why the secrecy?"

"Ain't much to say, elf. Red worked with Louis for a couple of years; then they had a disagreement, and she left to work with another player."

"Ah, yes, that would be Lady Marjolaine, I suppose?"

"You helped Red kill the bitch?" Marteau cleared his throat, spat and examined the product of his exertions with great interest. "Figures. I was wondering why she hooked up with a Crow, no offense intended."

"None taken." Zevran caught a flicker of movement in the distant window and was silent for a minute, his attention focused on the target. A small, grey cat stretched, then curled itself into a ball on the windowsill. Zevran sighed.

"Any saucy details?"

"Yeah. When she left, Red put an arrow through Louis's chest. Missed the heart by a finger's width."

Recalling the tension between Leliana and her former accomplice, Zevran was not overly surprised.

"He didn't try to get revenge?"

The target came into sight, an old man with a red wool cap, coming to the open window to stroke the kitten's head. Zevran took a deep breath and made minute adjustments.

"She _missed_, elf. A favor calls for a favor."

There was a sharp twang, then Zevran rose, stretching languidly.

"All done," he said.

In the distant mansion, the little grey cat jumped off the windowsill and meowed inquisitively. When its master failed to answer its call, the kitten started licking the slowly expanding puddle of blood, purring loudly.

* * *

"Are you sure about the layout?"

Louis saw Papillon's angelic features contract into a frown. She didn't like it when he doubted the information she and her girls worked so hard to collect. Still, tonight's raid was too important to leave anything to chance.

"We crossed information from three different guys. Those bucket heads aren't smart enough to feed us smoke," Papillon groaned. Then, with a perverse little smirk, "Well, not that kind of smoke, baby…"

Louis sighed. These days, Papillon's attempts at provoking him had increased beyond the usual teasing. He supposed it had to do with Red's presence; Marteau had probably shared his misgivings with the young bard, and she was reacting with the fear of one who has much to lose, with a hint of the avenger thrown in for good measure.

This was the downside to Louis's recruitment methods: he dealt with the strong but nearly broken, those survivors of Val Royeaux's underbelly who had all but forsaken hope. They saw something of themselves in him, or the other way around, and when Louis gave them his help and near unconditional trust, he forged a bond with his followers, a fierce loyalty that turned them into lethal weapons. One had to be careful around such weapons, though. Sometimes they turned out like Marteau, sturdy, blunt instruments whose companionship made life a little more sufferable; and sometimes they became beautiful, double-edged blades that sucked your soul in before they bit you in the arse.

* * *

_He watches from above as the redhead makes her way to the backyard where she and three other girls share an ill-jointed shack. She has hardly changed since their last meeting, but he notices that her shoulders are a little slumped and that her frame is thinner. She walks with the hesitant gait of the very poor. _

_Through his network, Louis knows that the job at the brothel didn't work out, and neither did any of the stints in taverns. Something always goes wrong; more often than not, the redhead's temper lands her in trouble. She has tried singing in the street, but the beggars' guild has chased her away, and she is not desperate enough to cripple herself in order to become one of them. She's been caught trying to cut a purse, and has only narrowly escaped the guard by jumping into a canal so filthy that her pursuers gave up, laughing. She hides under filth and a worn shawl, and buys rotting vegetables when market's over. _

_Altogether, by Louis's standards, Leliana is doing pretty damn fine. But that is all about to change. _

_

* * *

_

"I have the utmost trust in you and your wings, sweet butterfly. Three sources is good and solid," he said soothingly, trying not to give in to Papillon's provocation. The young bard slithered around the wide round table where Louis was drawing plans, moving with just the right amount of hips to throw his concentration off.

"Why are we aiding _her_," Papillon asked with a deceptively childlike pout. It was a surprisingly strong child that would survive what Papillon had been through, and come out with a relatively intact soul.

"Because, my blue-winged imp, in helping her we help ourselves. Whoever that Fereldan Warden is, our mysterious friends at the Inquisition clearly consider her important. With any luck, we will flush them out in the open, or at the very least learn something about their plans."

Louis reached for the crystal glass by his side. A swig of the old medicine, he thought, for concentration's sake.

* * *

_The loan sharks are waiting in the moonlit backyard. _

_Louis has made his little inquiry, and knows that the redhead has borrowed five silvers a few weeks ago, to pay for food and repairs to her lute, that meager lifeline of hers. When the loan sharks came back, she gave them the lute anyway, but Louis knows that by that time, the interests were already far beyond the cheap instrument's value. _

_The redhead is not stupid; she has moved to another part of town after they turned threatening. But she doesn't know how to erase her traces, and the sharks have followed the blood trail. As it were, sharks create ripples when they move for the kill, and those ripples have attracted a bigger predator's attention. _

_Louis doesn't know those humans, and doesn't care; they're not sharks in his eyes, they're small fry. Their customers, however, are another matter; the redhead has already been sold to the Nuglets. Louis would rather not stir up trouble with the dwarven gangs, but he doubts that the end users have bothered with particulars beyond age, body type and hair color. _

_In the dingy courtyard, the redhead lets out a little yelp of fright when the woman and the two men move out of concealment and surround her. Instead of listening to the words exchanged, Louis focuses on the redhead's body language. She is terrified, and rightly so, but he also sees the rage that boils below the surface, born from the frustrations of her broken life. When they try to seize her, there is a flash of steel, and one of the loan sharks backs away with a sharp cry of pain, clutching his hand. Of course, it only makes things worse. _

_The beating is vicious and methodical, aimed at breaking the victim's will rather than causing visible damage. The redhead falls to her knees, but keeps trying to fend off her attackers. A strong feeling of kinship rises in Louis; his anger flares in response to hers. A decision is made. _

_

* * *

_

"Are you sure that's the only reason?" Papillon asked, her finger tracing the half-blood's chest, then poking a nipple painfully. Louis smirked.

"When was the last time you saw me do something out of sheer kindness, mon ange?"

"Well, there are those cats you feed," the young bard said tentatively.

"They keep rats away. Try again?"

"All right, if not for kindness's sake, then for pussy's sake? Red is rather … yummy, no?"

"In truth? Almost as delicious as you are. But pray tell, lovely temptress, do you believe I would have ventured into that blood mage den for your body's sake?"

Papillon's eyes narrowed at the mention of her captors.

"I know I was a target of opportunity," she admitted with a hint of sadness in her voice.

"True, but irrelevant," Louis said softly, kissing the young bard's hand, "I would not risk my hide for booty, not yours, not anyone's. But I would go back in there for you. I would have gone in there for Marteau. You're my carta, and I owe you that much. That's how we did things in Little Kal Sharok: one for all, and sod the rest."

* * *

_He stands over the shaking redhead and offers a hand. She hesitates, takes it, and stands on wobbly legs. Standing up so soon after the beating has to hurt; he's been right about her. _

_Two loan sharks lie dead on the floor, limbs and spines bent at odd angles. The third one cries softly, unable to move his broken frame. The redhead glances at the crying attacker fearfully. Then she looks at Louis's face, pale under the moonlight, and she takes one step backwards when she recognizes him._

_Louis speaks. He explains who he is, what he can offer. A new life, safe among the predators. Trust, a family of sorts: one for all, and sod the rest. Then he waits for her answer._

_Slowly, the redhead nods her agreement._

_

* * *

_

"She betrayed you," Papillon growled. "She sold you to Marjolaine. She almost killed you."

"Yeah," Louis murmured dreamily, "but I should have seen it coming."

* * *

_There is yet one thing that must be done, if the redhead is to work for him. Drawing a thin silver-handled stiletto from his sleeve, Louis hands it to her and nods in the crying loan shark's direction. _

_As in a dream, Leliana takes the weapon. Louis notices the shaking of her hand; he can't make this easy, but he can help. In two quick strides he is atop the broken man, asking a question. A lie is offered, and the redhead shudders at the snapping of bones. When the muffled scream dies against Louis's palm, he asks again, with a politeness that will not take no for an answer. _

_Louis sees the horror and incomprehension in the redhead's eyes turn to cold anger as the loan shark talks, details his operating methods, the fate that was arranged for her. The man is still talking when the blade tears through his throat. _

_Leliana turns to Louis, the blade now held steady in her hand. The splatter of blood on her face looks black under the moon, but Louis sees that her hair refracts the cold light with a vague, reddish tinge. _

"_We'll call you Red," he says. _

_

* * *

_

Leliana raised her eyebrows in a show of distress.

"Please, please don't tell me you don't have it in stock? Oh, Maker, the Revered Mother will be so angry at me!"

"Sister, you have to understand… twenty barrels is a lot. We don't usually sell that much lantern oil in a single order…"

Leliana let the elderly clerk wring her hands in despair at the prospect of losing a juicy sale for a few seconds before she cut in:

"So how much do you have, anyway?"

The clerk made a quick mental calculation.

"Fourteen, fifteen… I'd need to go to the warehouse and check the stock…"

Leliana smiled brightly.

"No need to check, we'll take all you have. Delivery tonight, at the address indicated, yes? You may bill the Holy Andrastian Inquisition's offices," she added as she laid out forged Chantry documents on the counter. The clerk's eyes literally lit up, and Leliana could almost read her thoughts: _that Chantry sucker hasn't even asked for a bulk discount!_

"Maker bless you," Leliana concluded as she walked out of the merchant's offices, her brown Chantry robes caressing her skin soothingly. She stepped into the sunlight and started whistling a tune; it was a beautiful day. Maybe she'd even have time to do a little shopping before she saw Nyx. It would be fun to see the sorceress in a dress. Well, better hurry up with the oil thing...

_Three merchants down_. _Four more to go._


	20. Chapter 20: Sons of the Sun

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Sons of the Sun**

**

* * *

**

Bioware owns everything you recognize from the game; but Nyx is mine, my special little bundle of murderous rage.

_Updates are slow because I am adventuring and all. Well, not really, but at the very least, I've been busy. _

_

* * *

_

The sun was setting on Val Royeaux, turning the Grand Cathedral's golden dome into a glorious reminder of the prophet's sacrifice. From the blaze came the distant hum of the Chant, floating on the purple waters of the Clairaigues and lending some courage to the city's faithful before they faced the prospect of another plunge into the Fade's muddy depths. Few relished sleep these days, for even the faithful confusedly knew that something stalked them in their nightmares, something that laughed at their prayers and fed on their anguish.

The Templar and the chained apostate paused at the great gates by the riverside, and the holy warrior exchanged a few words with the men guarding the entrance: ritual salutations and wishes of unfaltering faith. The apostate shuddered as the steel doors pivoted silently on well-oiled hinges, and the Templar shoved the black-robed silhouette forward without a word.

They walked silently across the great courtyard; holy warriors on their way to their evening devotions gave them a cursory look, but seeing the odd apostate or bloodmage dragged into Castle Redoute was nothing remarkable. The new Grand Connetable had been entertaining a great many mages of late, mot of them headed for the dungeon. Mages coming back from the dark tunnels were a far rarer occurrence, and the river knew dark secrets.

The Templar stopped at the prison's gate, where sentinels examined his paperwork with the zeal of those who have too much time on their hands. Pleasantries were offered, the Templar attempting to joke with his colleagues, only to be met with scorn as they took charge of the prisoner and dismissed him. The Templar saluted and left, his shoulders stiffening slightly when the guards behind him commented on thick-skulled Fereldan recruits.

As he retraced his steps through the steel doors and felt them closing behind him like some primitive behemoth's maw, Alistair prayed that Leliana knew what she was doing.

* * *

In the silence of her prison, Nyx's eyes shot open, twin disks of silver coldly reflecting the light of the oil lamps. She felt the approach of her own essence, and her thin, pink lips contracted faintly as a shadow of an emotion passed through her mind. Nyx felt as though every cell in her body was stirring from a long lumber and craving _power_.

The Templars shifted uneasily; they, too, could feel the trickle of unholy energies that started to hum along the cage's bars, still kept in check by the Lyrium coiled around the steel. If Leliana could make it through to Nyx, neither faith nor enchantment would save those men.

After a long time, Nyx felt the bard move, wandering along the dark tunnels. Nyx raised her wizened hand before her eyes; curling and uncurling the claw-like fingers, watching the silver arabesques slither below the dead skin. Abruptly, the sorceress clenched her fist and willed the pain to be a beacon for Leliana. Never before had she initiated contact through the Bond, but after a while she felt the bard's surprise rise in response, and a weak echo of what must be a loving thought as Leliana inched closer. Nyx would have liked to answer in kind, but it wasn't possible, not yet, not while the Bond was as tenuous as spider silk.

* * *

At the very core of Arlathan are vast halls and lush gardens, where even the bold and powerful among the elves dare not tread. For they have not been built by mortal hands; the gods built them for their King, and there he holds his court among his kin and subjects.

Today, for the first time since the fall of the Sun God and the demise of the ancestors, the great halls of Elgar'Nan resonate with a challenger's footsteps.

Since they have passed the iridium gates, Andruil's haughty behavior has changed, becoming almost fearful. Never during the long years of her life has she or any of her siblings dared defy the will of the All-Father; but Andruil is not alone. Her Lord strides by her side, radiating dark power, and deep under her taut belly, the Goddess of the Hunt feels the tiny, fragile spark of a new life.

The Wolf Lord laughs softly as they pass the All-Father's statue, carved from a single, gigantic moonstone. It took centuries of labor by hundreds of elven craftsmen to create this tribute to the vengeful god; its beauty is almost otherworldly, and yet…

"The King tries too hard," the Wolf God growls mockingly, and Andruil understands. Elgar'Nan's posture is too majestic, his gaze too imperious, his smile too confident, as though the All-Father felt compelled to justify his claim on the Throne of the Sun. The Wolf Lord shuts his yellow eyes briefly, and shadows coil around the statue, masking it from sight for a second. When the shadows dissipate, the crown is gone from Elgar'Nan's forehead.

The ground vibrates slightly, and a distant rumble informs Andruil that her Lord's blasphemy has not gone unnoticed. She hesitates slightly, but the Great Wolf only smirks and leads her on. Together, they make their way under the titanic arches, through the lush gardens and into the gods' sanctum.

They are waiting at the All-Father's feet, Andruil's brothers, the seed of Elgar'Nan. The divine twins, Falon'Din and Dirthamen, clamor their challenge and shake their bows. Placing her hand in her Lord's, Andruil casts the twins a withering glance; she is their elder, and by insulting her Chosen, they are insulting _her_. She will not forget the slight.

The Wolf God ignores the provocation. He will deal with his enemy's whelps later, if they refuse to submit.

Andruil and the Wolf Lord climb the stairs of frozen light that lead to the king of the gods' throne, and she tries her best to sustain her divine Father's gaze, the unblinking, withering stare burning with the rage of aeons. Elgar'Nan's vast, shadowy figure is wreathed in thunderclouds that hide the perfection of his limbs; even seated, he towers over the other gods like a lion among house cats. Andruil feels her determination melt when his aura hits her like a dark tsunami, dwarfing the Goddess of the Hunt's power. She _will_ submit; she will bow and plead for forgiveness, and she will watch her lover's punishment without a word. Andruil's trembling hand slips from her Chosen's grasp.

The Wolf Lord's laugh booms through the halls of the gods, and the somber silhouette on the Throne of the Sun flinches. Andruil snaps from the charm, her aura rising with a crackling of incandescent wings. By her side, the Wolf Lord's shape is still that of a muscular, dark-skinned elf, pathetically small at the king of the gods' feet, but Andruil feels his power surge like a tropical storm, far, far beyond anything he summoned during their nuptial fight. _Trickster, Trickster_…

"Cheap tricks, my brother," the Wolf Lord taunts, "Fool's tricks! Is _this_ how you came by the crown of the Sun?"

"You will address me as All-Father…" Elgar'Nan starts in a thundering voice, but he is interrupted by the trickle of urine on his golden throne.

Dirthamen the Keeper of Secrets leaps upon the Wolf Lord, daggers of frozen light in hand, ready to avenge the offense to his Father. A nanosecond later, his tiny form writhes in the Great Wolf's maw, screaming as the colossal fangs tear and chew at him. The Wolf makes sure that the divine frame is thoroughly mangled before he spits him into his Father's lap. Slowly, painfully, the crushed bones and ripped organs start to heal, but a lesson has been learnt. Behind the Great Wolf's tower-like hind legs, Falon'Din prudently lays his bow on the titanium floor and retreats a few steps back.

"I have not come for vengeance," the Great Wolf growls softly, "that is _your_ province, and you can drown in it. I have come to claim my bride; or I could claim my crown, and _then_ my bride. The choice is yours, brother."

Elgar'Nan rises from his throne, wrapped in his dignity like in a billowing cape. Insane fury dances in the ancient eyes.

"Just because the Sun God spewed his seed at the abyss doesn't make us brothers, Nightson," he says sarcastically, "and just because you piss on my throne doesn't make your challenge receivable. Leave now, and I will be merciful."

The vast maw gapes in silent laughter.

"Unless you intend to bore me to death, God of Vengeance, I do not feel threatened. I warned you that I would outgrow my chains, didn't I?"

Elgar'Nan opens his mouth to answer, and the Great Wolf strikes, hitting the divine chest with giant paws, fangs snapping in search of his enemy's throat. Elgar'Nan falls, his arms turning to scythe-like blades, ripping through the Wolf's flesh and bones. The gods roll on the floor, crushing the golden throne and reducing the gilded halls to rubble as they gain momentum, _shift_ and grow. Andruil and her brethren hastily retreat to a safe distance, and in the sprawling city the elves run for their lives amid the tremor of falling buildings.

As the battle intensifies, the divine forms blur and mingle, stripping down to the core of their being, vast swirling clouds of an Essence that is not quite energy, and not quite matter. The issue of the battle becomes a simple function of who will smother who; and it is a fight Elgar'Nan cannot win. For the Wolf God knows only growth, and as the fight rages on, the king of the gods feels a terrifying _pull_, the hunger that is the hallmark of the Wolf's _other_ parentage. Elgar'Nan's all-consuming rage abates, replaced with the unfamiliar, unwelcome stench of fear. But the God of Vengeance has yet another weapon at his call.

Leaving great swathes of his substance to be swallowed by the Wolf God's devouring hurricane, Elgar'Nan flees to his divine father's shrine, the sphere of gold where the Sun God sits, tethered and castrated, awaiting his divine son's command. In the microseconds it takes the Wolf God to finish off the remains of divine essence and rush in pursuit, the God of Vengeance, now back to his elven form, has taken hold of the senile, withered figure's hand, and murmured a command.

High above Thedas, great structures alter their alignment.

When the Sun God opens milky, sightless eyes, a blinding pillar of light descends from the sky, pinning the Wolf God to the ground. The shockwave flattens entire blocks in the elven city; Andruil and her divine brethren struggle to avoid being swept and thrown about by the scorching winds. Yet, before the smoke clears, the Wolf God's huge, broken form moves feebly at the bottom of the vitrified crater, trying against all hope to repair the damage to his substance before it is too late.

Smirking, the God of Vengeance lowers his head to his enslaved father's ear, and Andruil sees his lips open, sealing her beloved's fate. Screaming in anger and despair, the Goddess of the Hunt _rips _the threads of time and hurls her golden spear through the air.

* * *

Leliana woke with a choking sob in the gloom of the cell. This time the vision had felt incredibly real, and Andruil's distress had shaken her to the very core of her being. She didn't remember falling asleep, and she hoped that she hadn't wasted her precious window of opportunity. It was impossible to tell the time in the musty tunnels.

Murmuring a silent prayer, Leliana pulled her lock picks from hollowed compartments in the heels of her boots – at it were, the guards at the entrance had hardly frisked her at all. Everybody knows that a mage is useless without her magic, and Leliana _was_ shackled in Lyrium chains when she got in, as attested by the itch on her wrists. The shackles now lay on the floor, glowing faintly.

Leliana made short work of her cell's lock and slipped into the ill-lit corridor, moving as silently as a hunting cat. She made a conscious effort to remember any information Papillon had collected on the dungeon's layout. Leliana assumed that she had been locked in one of the ordinary holding cells that Louis and Papillon had drawn in blue ink over their approximate map.

If the young bard's information was correct – Leliana didn't even want to imagine what would happen if it wasn't – Nyx must be detained in a "restricted" area, where only Templars with certain credentials were admitted. The layout of that rather vast area, represented on Louis's map by a large blob of red ink, was a mystery.

In other words, Leliana was pretty much left to her own devices, a situation that she didn't particularly relish. Only beginning bards enjoyed the excitement of unknown situations; those who lived long enough to be considered experienced knew that preparation and thorough scouting were the key to success.

_Well,_ Leliana thought with a smirk, _so much for experience._

She felt the pain after a few minutes of silent wandering through the cobweb-infested maze: a dull, burning sensation in her left hand. It wasn't too bad, and at first she dismissed it for an unpleasant side effect of the lyrium shackles. After a moment, though, she noticed that the odd sensation seemed to wax and wane depending on her orientation. Closing her eyes, Leliana spun around slowly, until she felt the burn reach its apex.

"I'm coming for you, my little mage," she whispered in the dark.

Slowly, Leliana made her way through the ill-lit tunnels. Even without Nyx's burning signal on her hand, she thought, she would have been able to find her. As she came closer to the sorceress, she felt stronger, more alert, as though every cell in her body reacted to the presence of her loved one.

Hearing the heavy tramping of armored boots on the stone floor, the bard hastily sought cover. The Templar seemed to plod through the maze forever before he reached the section of the tunnel where Leliana waited in ambush, concealed behind a metallic device with jutting spikes that she belatedly recognized for some sort of torture instrument. The thought of being locked in a dungeon full of such contraptions sent a trickle of cold sweat down Leliana's spine, and for a few, agonizing moments the grimy walls seemed to close in on her, but then she felt the sorceress's presence well up in her chest, dark and soothing.

The bard's breathing returned to its normal, controlled rhythm, and when the Templar passed before her hiding spot, she sprang into action with the cold efficiency of a well-oiled machine. She grabbed the warrior's ankles from under him in a brisk, jerking motion, adding the weight of his armor to his fall's momentum; the Templar was still stunned by the fall when Leliana ran him through with his own sword. Kneeling by the still-twitching body, she quickly retrieved the man's dagger and a set of big, complicated-looking keys. The dead man's sword she strapped to her back, to be used as last resort. She was grateful for the helmet; at least the Templar's face would not haunt her dreams.

She found the door minutes later; it stood out as the only thing _new_ in the decrepit tunnels. The door resembled certain vaults Leliana had broken into when she was younger; thick sheets of red steel welded together into one impressive feat of engineering. Smirking, Leliana tried the dead Templar's keys, and the massive bolts slid silently at the second try.

The tunnels behind the red door were just as musty and dilapidated as those on the outside, but torches and oil lamps were disposed at nearer intervals, bathing the place in a reddish light that made Leliana's progress more difficult. She cautiously moved from doorway to doorway, carefully planning her every motion, peeking into empty cells with a small mirror she carried to this effect. She found a sleeping Templar in one of the cells, and hesitated for a few seconds before slipping away like a ghost. Marjolaine would have slit the man's throat as he slept.

But Marjolaine was _dead_.

Grim words, their weight made all the greater by the pervading darkness; yet they brought on a strangely liberating feeling. Marjolaine was dead, and never again would Leliana be anyone's puppet.

* * *

She glides through the vast, brightly lit ballroom, brimming with pleasure as she feels the proud masks turn to follow her motion. Tonight she is one of them, decked out in a robe that cost more than the dingy building where Louis hides his wealth. Black gems and costly enchantments glitter darkly about her, for she has chosen the incongruous, almost distasteful costume of Dumat, the fallen Archdemon. Under the horned mask, Red's eyes are always in motion, scanning the colorful crowd for her target. She is not to approach; tonight's assignment can be summed up in two words:

_Be seen._

Louis wanted to send Carlotta, who is more experienced with seducing women, but the quick-tempered Antivan has gotten herself in trouble with one of her conquests' husband, and Louis has been forced to send her on a short holiday in the countryside until the smoke clears. Red has signaled her willingness to take the job, and Louis has tried every trick in his bag to convince her otherwise, with predictable results. Then the half-blood has briefed her for what seemed like hours.

The target, Louis has told her, is one of Val Royeaux's snobbish professionals known as bards, and one of the best. Louis and the mark have locked horns a few times in the past, and the mark has displayed a certain ruthless efficiency. Things are about to get ugly, since one of the target's high-born sponsors is trying to acquire land that is deemed part of the dwarven gangs' turf.

Now, Louis has been trying to develop his business in the juicy noble-stabs-noble business, and while a straight assassination has its merits, infiltrating the target's networks would be more profitable.

From the corner of her eye, Red catches a glimpse of the target, a lithe but undeniably feminine figure that moves around gracefully, chatting and smiling as though she owned the place. Under the mask and the fluid grace, Red detects the sinister focus of a predator, and she can't help a little thrill of excitement when she feels the deep brown gaze fall on her from a distance.

Marjolaine. A pretty name, for a victim.

* * *

Gilles trod the paths of the future.

The world was but an infinite expanse of dark, a wasteland so thoroughly scorched by the fires of the righteous that the only thing that could be seen moving was thin, ubiquitous grey ash. The silence was absolute, save for the desolate moan of cold winds and Gilles's quiet breathing.

Stilling his mind, Gilles summoned a prayer. His lips trembled slightly as he set all his will and faith to the task. Gradually, the black, billowing clouds that were the remains of the sky started to part, opening like a great, dark gate to welcome the Light, the Maker's sign to the surviving faithful.

Slowly, the Light dawned on the cold remains of man's hubris, the great ruined cities and the fortresses of the impious, and Gilles's thin lips parted in an ecstatic smile. Now was the difficult part of the meditation; to visualize the coming of a being too perfect to be conceived by a human mind. Gilles preferred to imagine the Maker as a white-clad Templar knight, wreathed in pure, white light; he also tended to imagine his father's features on the smiling, benevolent face under the white helm…

Something was wrong with today's meditation, Gilles realized as the light increased in intensity. The Maker's Light had a rather inappropriate reddish tinge that danced on the ruins of Thedas as though the Day of Flames was being replayed all over again…

The sound of vigorous knocking on his quarters' door interrupted Gilles's meditations, and the Grand Connetable's eyelids popped open, the vision of the wasteland dissipating instantly.

The reddish glow, though, did _not_ disappear. Instead, it crept on every surface of the sparsely furnished apartments, lending the heroic tapestries on the walls a sinister, half-glimpsed life of their own. Rising from the thick carpet he had been kneeling on, Gilles trod to the balcony in two swift, worried strides, only to stop and stagger back in shock.

Behind him, the door to his quarters flung open, and a much flustered Templar officer rushed in, bellowing from the top of his lungs a message that merely confirmed the spectacle before Gilles's eyes.

_Fire. Fire and sacrilege. _

"My lord, the warehouses! The Lyrium depots are under attack!"

From the distant Templar warehouses, further on the Clairaigues's embankments, a fantastic plume of flame rose in mocking confirmation, bathing all of Val Royeaux in an apocalyptic glow.

* * *

Leliana vaguely felt the tremor of the explosion through the thick walls of stone and earth and smirked in the reddish gloom of the tunnel. Things seemed to go according to plan, but she had to hurry in order to take advantage of the diversion. Nyx was close now, so close that Leliana could almost feel the beating of her heart, lighter and faster than her own. The sensation was both soothing and disturbing, but there was no time to wonder about the nature of the strange bond that she appeared to share with her lover.

Leliana had almost reached the heavy metal door behind which she felt the Warden's presence when she heard the sound of heavy boots on the floor, coming fast behind her. Probably the sleeping Templar, she thought as she slipped into one of the many rooms on the sides of the tunnel, closing the door silently behind her. The heavy boots soon crossed past her position; Leliana let out a silent sigh of relief, then took a moment to study her surroundings.

The room was much larger than the cells she had investigated on her way, and was obviously used as some sort of herbalist or sorcerer's study. In the feeble, flickering light of a single, blood-red candle, Leliana could make out the glint of dozen upon dozen of flasks, vials, alembics and varied instruments that she could not name. In the far corner of the room was a big, strangely ornate cage, covered by thick black curtains. Leliana's heart jumped a little when she heard something shift inside the cage. Seconds later came a faint, but undeniable sound, someone whispering. A name.

"Leliana…"

This wasn't Nyx's voice; yet it sounded oddly familiar, as if Leliana ought to know the person inside the cage. Every instinct in the bard screamed that walking up to the cage and opening that heavy curtain was a bad idea, that nothing good ever came from unknown beings locked up in sorcerer's lairs, but she did it anyway: she walked to the cage and ripped the curtain open, and then stared in disbelief at the grinning occupant of the cage.

The thing had been an elf; it had eyes of pure, burning silver and pale skin and long, dark hair, and for an agonizing second Leliana wondered if this was not Nyx, if the Wolf God's curse had not finally turned the Warden into that insane, quivering, muttering abomination.

Then the thing whispered again, cocking its strangely deformed head to the side, and the illusion was dispelled by its demented hiss.

"Betrothed. Yes. You come for the beloved Child, oh, you do? But you late, tooooo laaaaate. The Master will not eat you now, no, poor you… Waste of meat, you are…"

The creature's voice suddenly rose into a weird, ululating song in a language that Leliana could not quite understand. Grinding her teeth, the bard drew her dagger, resolute to suppress the creature's racket before it attracted a guard's attention. But the song stopped as abruptly as it had started, and the creature smiled at her, baring row after row of thin, metallic fangs.

"Do not slay His vanguard, little betrothed. The eaten ones will not eat you. Not you: bad meat. But the little priests: they will. Pesky priests. Slay this one," the thing concluded, pointing a deformed claw at a point behind Leliana's shoulder.

"Slay…?" Leliana blurted, and a rustle of robes behind her warned her of the danger. The bard threw herself to the ground as a thrown dagger clanged on the cage's bars. Rolling to her feet, Leliana faced her foe, dagger at the ready.

The fight was short, brutal and one-sided, for the man was no match for a well-trained fighter and was handicapped by the thick, leather-bound volume he clutched to his chest. Within seconds the Tevinter man lay dead on the stone floor, and Leliana curiously detailed the exotic garments, the clean-shaven head and the dark, hawkish features. Acting on a whim, she picked up his book – Louis had specifically asked her to be on the lookout for any useful information – and slipped it into her satchel.

"Brother Umbra? Is everything all right?" a Templar's voice called from further down the tunnel, and Leliana swore under her breath when she heard heavy footsteps approaching the door. To make things worse, the thing in the cage was literally glowing with glee at the demise of the Tevinter, and kept cackling loudly, alternating between that strange language and some less pleasant talk of food. Meat, more specifically.

"Brother Umbra?" the Templar called from outside the door.

"Meeeaaaat!" the creature howled in response.

In a desperate gambit, Leliana snuffed the candle, shoved the dead man's arm into the cage and crept behind a nearby crate. Not unexpectedly, the creature's shouts stopped abruptly, replaced with renting, crushing and masticating sounds.

"Brother… Maker's breath!" the Templar exclaimed as he took in the scene and rushed to his fallen colleague's assistance. The abomination shrieked as the holy warrior's sword skewered it through the bars of the cage; a second later Leliana's blade slid between the man's helmet and breastplate, and the Templar fell limp before the cage, his blood mingling with the whining creature's.

_One less_; but the racket must have alerted other guards, for Leliana heard the door at the end of the tunnel creak on its massive hinges, and excited voices filled the tunnel. There was no going back; drawing her Templar sword with a sinister smile, the bard crouched behind the door and waited.

The first Templar entered the room, and Leliana's dagger cut through the unprotected flesh at the back of his knee, severing tendons and sending the armored mass of the warrior crashing to the ground. Two other Templars rushed in, shields at the ready, and the bard retreated into the shadowy recesses of the laboratory, counting on her loose black robes to blur her silhouette and make her harder to hit.

The tactics worked, to an extent, and she deftly ducked an opponent's charge, her own blades bouncing harmlessly off the Templar's heavy plate as she struck and leapt out of range. By that time her second foe was nearly on her, bringing his heavy shield in play in an attempt at smacking her to the floor. Leliana's veins burned with the excitation of battle and something… other, and she let herself slide to the floor under the shield's path. The dagger in her left hand left a deep gash in the man's thigh, but he was as high on adrenaline as Leliana was and hardly noticed the wound. The bard desperately dodged the fast, spinning arc of his sword, and then the second Templar's shield caught her shoulder and sent her crashing into shelves overflowing with strange vials.

Scrambling to her feet amid shattered glass and foul vapors, Leliana realized that she couldn't win this fight. A third Templar had just entered the laboratory, and there was no way she could subdue three heavily armored, fanatical warriors on her own. Leliana felt panic rise when she saw the third man adopt a protective stance, blocking the door while the two other Templars slowly converged on her. Then, as if answering some unspoken signal, all three Templars raised their swords, and their pale, white-clad figures seemingly turned into blinding white suns.

Yelping in painful surprise, Leliana instinctively shut her eyes and averted her face from the unbearably bright light, but there was no escape: the blaze burned right through her eyelids. The whole room seemed to have turned into a blinding inferno, and she felt sweat start to trickle on her brow as the temperature rose sharply. The infernal light even seemed to distort noises, and she could no longer tell whether the footsteps she heard were coming her way.

"We were warned you would come," said a strangely remote, buzzing voice, "the Wolf Born calls you. But you cannot be let in her presence."

"In the Maker's Light, you are cleansed," said another distorted, passionless voice, and Leliana threw herself to the ground in a desperate bid to escape, feeling a sword cut through the air mere inches from her head as she landed hard – the light appeared to make her dizzy, too. A steel-clad boot caught her in the stomach, and she was projected under a large work bench, gasping for breath in the faintest of shadows. Her weapons were lost; the fight was lost, Nyx was lost, and all Leliana could think about was to try and crawl away from the white inferno. If only she could escape the light for a few seconds... Leliana vaguely felt the radiant man close in on her, and a second later the heavy table was flung away like a leaf and her cover was gone. The Light gnawed at her senses again, agonizing.

"The Maker's reign is neigh", the voice buzzed, and Leliana felt the sword being raised.

"_Fuck that__,"_ a familiar voice shrieked back from deep within Leliana's chest.

The radiant man hesitated for less than a half-second when he saw Leliana open eyes that were small pools of black mocking his radiance, but it was enough. The shadows poured from Leliana's eyes like angry serpents, coiling around her body in a sheath of oily smoke, and she struck. The Templar was projected through the room as Leliana threw herself shoulder-first into his breastplate; they hit a wall and landed in a sprawl with the bard's shadowy figure on top.

Leliana could see through the light now, see the grotesque form nailed to her enemy's flesh like a still-fluttering moth pinned to a collector's board. The sight of the spirit's agony fed her rage –Nyx's rage – and she banged the helmeted head into the stone floor three times, coldly noticing how the forged steel flattened with each blow until blood squirted from the crushed helmet's visor. Then the rage-being that was Leliana rose to face her remaining foes.

"_Come to me, quick," _Nyx's voice whispered in her chest, and Leliana felt the dark power start to ebb away. She frantically clung to it even as she leapt towards her opponents, the dead Templar's sword in hand; something inside her desired the darkness, craved the speed and the blood thirst and the remorseless violence. There were images, too: visions of battlefields too vast and too terrible to be of this world flashed through her mind as she rushed her enemies.

Even with the darkness burning through Leliana's veins, the remaining Templars were a formidable threat; their movements were abnormally fast, displaying the jerky, hurried quality of angry insects. The blades they held burned with a cold flame and Leliana could feel the spirits' energies fueling their muscles.

In the end, it was the Templars' training that caused their undoing. Even as the bard danced under their blades and leapt from side to side to avoid being flanked, the radiant men would stop time and again to unleash a barrage of mystical energy, something Leliana had seen Alistair do against magic-wielding foes. The darkness coiled around Leliana shrugged off the Templars' attempts, but she used the brief pauses in her opponents' movement to dispatch them ruthlessly.

Whatever the power that sustained Leliana, it was not magic. At least, she thought as her blade punched effortlessly through steel plate, not that kind of magic. The radiance died with the last of the Templars, in the hiss of steel withdrawing from steel. Instants later, the darkness was gone from the bard's body and mind, leaving her empty and vaguely nauseous. She didn't look down when she stepped over the dead and into the eerily quiet tunnel.

Swaying slightly, Leliana took off towards the heavy steel door.


	21. Chapter 21: Retribution

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Retribution**

Bioware owns everything you recognize from the game; but Nyx is my own vision of darkness.

* * *

"Maker have mercy!"

"Oh, my, what is this?"

"The depots! The warehouses are burning!"

"Oh, how dreadful!"

One by one, most of the Inquisition's men and women had left their desks or watch posts and gathered in the gardens to watch the unthinkable events that unfolded on the other side of the fiery, rolling Clairaigues waters. The holy folks' frantic chatter covered the murmur of the river and the rumor of the perpetually active city, every clerk and nun offering his or her appraisal of the situation with a great abundance of Chant-inspired references. In a sense, most of them welcomed the little disturbance to the routine of their lackluster existence. Tomorrow, they would regale friends and family with the account of the blaze; they would be the bearers of important news, the center of attention, and surely the Maker would not begrudge them this little pleasure.

An explosion rocked the trees on the distant embankment, and the assembled Chantry folks sighed in fearful admiration. The light from the distant blaze increased in intensity, painting the perfectly straight lanes and square buildings of Chateau des Anges in starkly contrasted red and black; a fiery, dead-still landscape of geometric volumes among which the small groups of clerks and Templars appeared strangely displaced, as though their living, organic shapes did not belong here.

For the two lithe, sinister shapes that silently slid from shadow to pitch-black shadow, infiltrating the place under these conditions was child's play.

The tallest shadow stopped in front of a cleverly hidden air vent and pulled a tool from a broad grey silk sash while its smaller, more compact companion crouched in a defensive stance, serrated daggers ready to fly towards any unlucky disturbance. The grate surrendered with a faint creak of forced metal, and the shadows promptly affixed a grappling hook to the edge of the pit and disappeared into the Holy Andrastian Inquisition's private subterranean hell.

Things were different down here. Well-lit, to start with, and clinically clean, with very little in the way of shadows or cover. The mission's difficulty had suddenly increased exponentially. Zevran smirked as he undid the grey scarf that covered his face, his brown gaze meeting the Orlesian bard's liquid blue. Papillon smiled back through her mask.

In Zevran's experience, places that scared the hell out of people were often surprisingly easy to break in, especially if those places were designed to hold broken, unarmed prisoners. Judging by the prostrate figures he glimpsed in the holding cells, this was just such a place. At first the moans and prayers that rose on the rogues' passage unnerved him a little, but he quickly reasoned that they were nothing exceptional in here, and unlikely to draw much attention. In fact, the whole place seemed to be bathed in a perpetual, macabre murmur, and Zevran wondered if the Veil was frayed enough that these tunnels would soon start echoing with the insane rambling of abominations and the shuffling of cadaverous feet.

They progressed swiftly through neatly paved tunnels, Papillon leading the way based on the information her _wings_ had collected about the place. Zevran couldn't help being mildly impressed at the sheer amount of data that the young bard's network had been able to coax out of various caretakers, gardeners and guards working for one of Thedas's most secretive organizations. In fact, the more time Zevran spent in Val Royeaux, the more he appreciated the local professionals' working style, and he had now come to the point where he seriously considered making this fine city his residence. Maybe Louis and his powerful protectors wouldn't mind subcontracting some of their business to an honest Antivan craftsman? Zevran wondered what it would take for Papillon to switch employers. Theirs would be a lucrative partnership, and that _ass_…

Papillon suddenly motioned for him to stop and he froze in his tracks, daggers held at the ready as the young bard crouched by a turn of the tunnel and peeked ahead with a small mirror. Turning to Zevran, Papillon addressed him a few quick hand gestures.

_Guard post. Templars; four of them, guarding the door to the archives. Really, no big deal…_

Moving with slow, controlled gestures, Zevran silently un-strapped his small rucksack, carefully extracted a big, rounded vial and methodically strapped his backpack on. His visit to Louis's storage room had proven a very fruitful one, and he had been rather pleased to see the master spy's eyes widen a little at his expertise with volatile and poisonous substances.

_Expertise? Artistry, more_ _like_, Zevran thought as he lovingly shook the black vial, not too soft and not too strong, the way one ought to treat beauty, no matter whether this beauty resided in a honey-skinned Antivan _bella_ or in a fragile skin of glass. When the black liquid inside the vial started to bubble dangerously, Zevran smoothly stepped around the corner and lobbed the grenade into the guard post.

The Crows had a ridiculously bombastic name for this sort of weapon: velvet death. Zevran liked the name. The crafting was as dangerous as the ingredients were precious, but the effects in an enclosed space… well, they were quick, and unpleasant. The black cloud that filled the guard post had the remarkable property of muffling sounds, and the Templars' choked cries drowned helplessly amid the sinister murmur of the holding cells. Leaning leisurely on the wall, Zevran fished a small, green apple from his pocket and bit in it. Papillon shot him an interrogative glance.

"You want to wait for the drug to break down into harmless components," he explained with an engaging wink, "want a bite?"

To Zevran's mild surprise, Papillon took the offered apple, turning it under the lamplight to examine the bite mark in the fruit's red skin.

"A little bite never hurts," she commented innocently before she bit into the fruit and handed it back to the Antivan.

"Ah, but where is the fun if it doesn't hurt a little?" Zevran's nostrils flared slightly; there was a hint of Papillon's scent on the apple, and he closed his eyes briefly to take it in. Mint, lemon and smooth skin… When he opened his eyes, Papillon stood very close, in a rather startling demonstration of silent movement.

"Some people may disagree…" The human's lips were about level with the point of Zevran's ear, her cool breath sending a delicious shiver down his neck.

"Like Louis?" Zevran asked playfully. He had a pretty good inkling of where the conversation was going, and it promised to be a lot of fun.

"Hmm. Or like your stunning companion?"

"Much as it pains me to admit it, I wouldn't really know."

"Would you, now? _I_ would like to know," Papillon purred in his ear.

"Ah, shall I tell just you what you wish to hear then? I have a rather fertile imagination for these things."

The young bard pouted. "Maybe we should discuss this later," she said with a hint of annoyance as she turned and walked to the archives' reinforced door, hips swaying entirely too much. By the time Papillon crouched by the heavy door, her bearings showed nothing but cool professionalism. Zevran watched her work for the following ten minutes or so, the great locks reluctantly yielding to the Orlesian's light touch and superior lockpicking firepower. Finally, the massive steel pane pivoted open, and Papillon turned to Zevran with a little bow.

"Guests first," she quipped.

"Grazie mille, Bella," Zevran replied, twisting slightly on the threshold so that he didn't have to turn his back to his companion.

Keeping an eye out for traps, the rogues tip-toed into the Inquisition's vast underground archive. Zevran had imagined vast, cavernous halls with baroque sculptures and maybe a few titillating torture implements, so he was a little disappointed at the absolutely utilitarian arrangement of the vault.

"What now?" he asked, pointing at the rows after rows of neatly labeled wooden boxes on their neatly labeled storage shelves.

"Now we play bookworms, my handsome elf. Don't tell me you are afraid of a little paperwork?"

Zevran's sigh echoed for a long time in the silent vault.

* * *

"I must say, this is something I have wanted to do for a long time."

Louis cast an amused glance at the exiled Fereldan prince. Alistair's face, reddened by the intense heat from the blaze, was split from ear to ear by a mischievous grin. Not so surprising, if you considered that the man had only escaped a life of boredom in the Templars by joining the Grey Wardens. Not too far behind Alistair's robust shape, Louis could make out the figures of the warehouses guards, bound and gagged and struggling feebly on the floor. Toast hovered in the background, the scowl below the brand telling of her disapproval at letting her charge screw around in underground operations. Toast never fully relaxed, and that made her a perfect fit for her job as a bastard prince's bodyguard.

"I take it you didn't like taking Lyrium, my Lord?"

"Oh for goodness's sake, Louis, were are burning and pillaging Chantry property and you still milord me?" Alistair bellowed over the roar of the flames, and Louis smirked and bowed slightly.

"Very well, Alistair, then."

"See, that didn't hurt so badly, did it?"

The master spy's eyes narrowed slightly. The boy had obviously no idea how much it _pissed him off_ to bow to noblemen. Those who grew up in Little Kal Sharok didn't harbor too much love for the ruling elites of either human or dwarven society. But as much as Louis liked Alistair, the bastard prince would never understand this and would never be one of his kin. Better keep things civil, and distant. The kid was perceptive, though, and answered the original question in a softer, almost apologetic tone.

"I hated taking lyrium. I always tried to hide it under my mattress and throw it into the drains. Sometimes I didn't manage. Lyrium made me feel strong, but… I don't know how to describe it… The first time I saw what it does to older Templars…"

Louis nodded. Templars were fools on more than one level. Not only did the abuse slowly gnaw at their brains, it also required increasingly high dosages to keep its power-boosting effect. Louis had heard, and was inclined to believe, tales of Templars forced into withdrawal and madness because their upkeep had simply become too expensive for their local Chantry.

A soft whistle from one of the Grey Warden scouts brought his mind back to the matter at hand. Seconds later, a thin elven woman stopped before the half-blood, struggling to catch her breath.

"They're coming," the scout said through ragged breath, "nearly two hundred of them. Must have emptied the Redoute."

"Everyone in place?"

"Yup. Waiting for your signal."

Louis nodded and motioned for Alistair and the small group of Wardens posted with him to retreat into adjacent streets. Louis had pulled a few strings and greased a few wheels, ensuring that tonight's little party was going to unfold in the strictest privacy, with no City Guard interference.

Smiling, the half-blood motioned for Marteau and his crew to push a small, black-painted cart towards the flame. Then all sped away into the shadows. Seconds later, the blaze erupted into a phantasmagoria of blue and green flames.

The hunt of a lifetime was on. Funny that it should all have started with one little red-haired girl…

* * *

_He should never have sent her to seduce Marjolaine. This was a job for a seasoned spy, not for a gifted beginner with a crazy, screw-it-all attitude. _

_He watches the shock of tousled red hair, the way a lone sunray is refracted in fiery sparks, the skin of the neck and shoulders so white, almost translucent, with a few freckles sprinkled here and there. She looks innocent, even fragile in spite of the well-developed muscles in her shoulders, and yet…_

_Yet her presence is a rather embarrassing testament to her seduction powers. Red is not really a beginner any more; the last two years have turned her into a very capable professional; her kind heart and capability for empathy have become deadly weapons in the service of a growing ambition._

_Now Louis has serious misgivings about what he – they – just did. Not that he is against mixing fun with business; heck, life would be pretty dull if he didn't. But he knows that by allowing this to happen, he is playing with fire. And yet, given the possibility, he might well do it all over again. _

_He is not vain enough to believe that her presence by his side is entirely due to his exotic looks or charisma. More likely, it was a test of sorts, one that she passed and he failed. The balance of power has shifted a little, and he worries that this will make her mission all the more dangerous. _

_She has told him how she has been able to win Marjolaine's affections, and how the older woman is training her as an apprentice. Heck, she has just shown him a few tricks of Marjolaine's. She speaks of the bard master with a little too much admiration, and he wonders if her hand will tremble when he orders the kill. If anything, Red's presence by his side today is an early warning, a telltale sign of conflicting loyalties. _

_Maybe he should have her kill Marjolaine now. Maybe he should call back the whole operation and settle things the old way, with the gang storming the bard master's sophisticated little mansion and bringing back the head and hands. But Red is bringing in a precious trickle of information, names and facts that would take months or years to uncover without her, and he is loath to kill the goose with the golden eggs._

_In hindsight, Louis dug his own grave like a good little amateur. _

_

* * *

_

Nyx watched the Templars take position by the sides of the reinforced door as muffled shouts and the clash of steel on steel echoed feebly through the metal, filling the vast stone room with the murmurs of a phantom battle. Tiny elven fists grasped the bars of the cage in the center of the underground prison, ignoring the glacial pain from the Lyrium incrustations. The closest Templar threw the pale elven sorceress a nervous glance, and Nyx smiled at him, a joyless expression that was hardly more than the baring of white, slightly too pointed teeth.

"I will kill you," she said softly, her murmur echoing through the chamber just as the sounds of battle outside the door died out.

"Be quiet, maleficar," the holy warrior answered automatically, but his voice sounded too thin for his barrel chest and broad shoulders, the voice of a dead man, and the elf's smile widened. He knew what she knew: the inner doors to this prison were barred from the outside. The guards were sealed in with the Wolf Born, a precarious position at the best of times, and now there was nothing they could do but wait for their unknown enemy to barge in. They weren't afraid, not really, not yet, but Nyx knew that this would change, in time.

_Soon._

The promise of power crackled faintly through the bars of her cage, creating fugitive streaks of blue light along the coiling veins of lyrium. A mortal mage would not break this prison, but Nyx was ready to take her chances. Leliana's presence was close, so close that Nyx's banished emotions bubbled and seeped right through the ice cap that had frozen her mind for so long. Now the ice was thinning and cracking under the pressure of deep, unseen forces. Part of her feared the consequences of the inevitable thaw, but a more fundamental, darker part of her _craved_ it: a thing of fire and darkness that clawed under the ice, demanding to be unleashed.

It would not be denied. The darkness was a treacherous weapon, but anything was better than to be caged and subdued.

It was a strange, disorienting feeling, this onslaught of contradictory emotions, and Nyx finally understood why the Rite that she would have described as the great freeze was called Tranquility. As the bard walked along the now-silent tunnel and approached the reinforced door to Nyx's prison, new cracks appeared in the sorceress's frozen consciousness, deep concern and a sort of absurd pride at the idea that Leliana was risking so much for her. It wouldn't be so bad, Nyx thought, to die knowing that she had mattered so much for the bard, silly though it seemed. The thought brought a genuine little smile to her lips, and she shook her head slightly.

_No sodding way. I'm taking that_ _bard_ _out of here, even if I have to slaughter all of Val Royaux. _

A series of loud clicks and the clang of bolts retracting into the door informed Nyx that the final moments of her captivity had come, and the Rite's barriers unraveled some more. A big chunk of mental ice broke off, allowing fear and anger to literally gush through in a burning adrenaline rush. Throwing her head back, the sorceress laughed, and then clamored her challenge, the battle cry that had carried the Ferelden armies through the Horde and the ruins of Denerim.

"_DEATH!"_

The holy warriors glanced at the strange mage behind the bars, and the steel door pivoted silently on well-oiled hinges. A wounded Templar, his white woolen cape and lacquered helmet splattered in dark red splotches, teetered on the threshold and feel to his knees, clutching his belly. Behind the fallen Templar, the tunnel was pitch black, the torches snuffed by the shadowy attacker; wisps of oily smoke drifted in. The man on the threshold gasped in pain under the heavy helmet, and one of Nyx's guards let go of his shield and reached out to him while the others scanned the murky depths of the tunnel.

The wounded Templar seized his compassionate colleague's wrist and twisted, unbalancing the heavier man. Icy blue eyes gleamed through the blood-splattered visor, and Leliana's dagger plunged in the chink below the warrior's armpit, slashing muscles and severing the axillary artery. Pulling herself to the shocked Templar, the bard shoved him into an attacker's path and followed with a flurry of low-line blows, managing to draw blood before she had to duck away from the second man's attack.

Nyx watched with increasing worry as the three remaining Templars, overcoming their surprise, moved into a fighting formation, cutting the bard off from both the exit and the cage. Soon she could hear Leliana's breath grow ragged under the heavy helmet as the bard struggled to keep her foes at a distance. Then the holy warriors called on the Light, and things got quite a bit worse as Nyx was engulfed in searing, nerve-shattering radiance and lost sight of the battle. It was all the sorceress could do not to curl up into a ball in her cage; somehow the strange light radiating from the Templars made her feel nauseous, as though its brightness carried with it some insidious poison.

Nyx felt a jolting pang of pain in her right side even as Leliana's cry rang to her ears; fear and vertigo washed over her, and she understood that Leliana was wounded, perhaps grievously. She felt the darkness escape from her, but this time it was a mere trickle, hardly sufficient to close the bard's wounds. Perhaps the strange magic that flowed through the Bond had been exhausted during Leliana's previous fight. Nyx strained against the cage in furious despair, calling out the bard's name. Leliana was so close, so close and yet as unattainable as the moon.

* * *

Dark, damp and musty. The Devoured liked this subterranean environment; the gloom soothed the pain of its burning eyes, and the thick walls attenuated the nauseous feeling of being surrounded by crawling, pulsating _life_. For The Devoured craved the still of death, the mournful song of dry branches under a starless sky.

Of its past life, it had but the faintest, distant memories; an eternity ago, it had been alive, running insignificant errands, fulfilling the repulsive functions of life, food, excretion, reproduction, as well as the crumbling walls of the alienage allowed. None of it made any sense now, not any more.

Not any more. The Master had caught it, one cold night as it huddled for warmth amongst its family in a wooden shack. It vaguely remembered the pain and terror that had greeted him within the Master's maw, just as it vaguely remembered being spit out, soulless, a thing of dead flesh and living metal, chosen among the Master's dead trees to roam the lands of the living as the vanguard of His coming.

And so the Devoured had crawled in the dark, and killed, and sung the Master's praise; it had exulted as its prayers further unraveled the great chains that held Him away from His birthright. It had sought its kin among the shadows, to breed and sing together, and the pesky priests had caught it. They put it in a cage and did things to its body, painful things, but nothing they did could compare with the agony of being alone in the world of life. The Devoured needed to be with its kind, needed to let its voice blend with theirs and rend the Master's chains. For with the Master's reign would come oblivion, and oblivion was the only thing it aspired to.

It had recognized the human instantly; the smell of her blood seeping through her thin skin woke its hunger, the deep-seated drive to rip and rend the flesh garment and to offer the naked soul to the Master. It also knew that this was forbidden, that the Master wished to postpone the devouring until more pleasurable circumstances. The contradiction interested it, but only to the extent that it distracted it from the pain that was its existence.

The call came while it lay panting in its cage amid the pink, moist remains of the priest's arm. The great gash in the Devoured's abdomen was healing quickly, long threads of silver etching slowly across the wound like metallic spider webs; it took more than a sword to the gut to bring peace to its kind. The call hurt much more than a sword, however, for suffering and hunger were the only language the Devoured understood.

Hissing softly, it pulled the priest's body closer. Misshapen claws fumbled with the dead man's belt for a few seconds, then found the key. A beatific smile over its distorted features, the Devoured unlocked its cage and leapt into the brightly illuminated tunnel, dashing towards the source of the call.

* * *

The shadows were too weak; the Light passed right through Leliana's eyes, skin and flesh, singeing her very soul as she danced and struggled to stay alive. She could vaguely hear the sorceress's voice, warped and faraway through the radiance, but she wasn't sure of its direction. The gash in her thigh, the result of a Templar's glancing blow, was slowly closing, but this time the darkness had brought no surge of power, no all-consuming rage that Leliana could have used overwhelm her foes. Instead, the darkness seemed to waver, and she felt it was but a question of time before it subsided totally and left her practically naked before the Light. Before Leliana, the Templars were blinding silhouettes of living white light, and she had to fight the urge to cover her head and wait for the bite of steel. Instead, she willed her eyes to stay open despite the pain.

The Templars regrouped for a new assault, and it was all Leliana could do to leap aside, spinning and parrying sword blows as best she could. Every blow from the radiant swords left noticeable gouges in her sword and dagger, and she knew that the weapons would not hold for long. The Templars' attacks were slow and methodical, aimed at whittling away her resistance rather than outright killing her. Leliana realized suspect that her opponents planned to take her alive, and the thought of the torture instruments in the musty tunnels galvanized her aching muscles. Lunging forward with the energy of despair, the bard managed to get within a Templar's guard and inflict a deep cut to his sword arm. The man's weapon clashed loudly on the floor, but Leliana had to back off before she could finish off her mark, and she threw herself to the floor, rolling wildly as a radiant sword scarred the stone pavement where she had stood a second before.

The wounded man bent forward to pick up his sword; Leliana could have sworn that the Templar's blazing eyes smirked at her. Not for long, though. Something hit his back: something small and angry, with eyes and claws that reflected the surrounding blaze fiercely. The thing's flesh smoldered under the Light's assault, and Leliana saw scraps of charred skin fall from its emaciated frame, but it gave no sign that it noticed the pain as it snatched the fallen man's helmet and bit down into its victim's neck. The light faded from the writhing Templar's body, and his screams filled the room as he desperately tried to wring the thing off. Leliana saw a blazing blade plunge through the creature's ribcage, and it gave out a loud, high-pitched whine, but the infernal jaws did not relent.

"Lel, come to me! I am here baby, hurry!"

Somehow the distraction seemed to have lessened the Light's grasp onto Leliana; or maybe the fear in Nyx's voice gave her strength, because she now could tell the sorceress's direction with pinpoint accuracy. Turning away from her foes, Leliana dashed towards the pleading voice. The third Templar moved to block her path, and she desperately twisted to avoid a blow from the incandescent sword, fell, losing her own sword in the fall, rolled to her feet and ran as if all the demons of the Fade were after her.

Demons and Templars. Funny how opposites met in the end, Leliana thought as she reached blindly for the sorceress's outstretched hand, found it, and then crashed at full speed onto cold, hard metal. Great red flowers exploded in her field of vision; she tried to hold on to Nyx's hand as she slumped onto limp knees, the torturing Light quickly fading into deepening red.

Leliana tried to tell Nyx about the boat that waited outside the Redoute's battlements, but her voice drowned in the great rush of darkness that overwhelmed her senses, and she wearily gave up and let the merciful void carry her away.

* * *

"Ancestors… Oh, Ancestors… What have you done?"

Elgar'Nan's thin, quavering murmur is anything but regal, and under the bent and soiled crown, his noble features are frozen in a white mask of terror. The All-Father is staring at Anduril's spear. The weapon, still vibrating from the impact, has traversed the Sun God's brow and embedded itself deep into the sphere of gold that is his prison. Divine blood, thick and mercury-like, pours out of the wound, flowing slowly on the older god's hollow cheeks and emaciated chest. The wound will not heal: unlike his sons, the withered god has long lost the will to keep his essence alive.

Like the Ancestors before him, like any ordinary life form, the Sun God is dead, irrevocably and definitely _dead_, and this means…

"The Fires…" Elgar'Nan whispers, his eyes wide with disbelief, "Only Father could control the Fires…" A spark of his old anger returns, and the God of Vengeance points a shaking index at Andruil.

"I should have drowned you when you emerged from Mythal's womb, bitch of a daughter. Do you understand what you have done? The Fires are _gone_! You've killed us all!"

Andruil snarls at the insult, the last straw in a long series of humiliations at the hands of the tyrant. Wings of magic crackle, razor-sharp talons snap in challenge as she assumes a more sinister form. The old bastard has been weakened to within an inch of his life by his fight against the Wolf God; now Andruil is about to finish what her Lord has started.

"Then I will take responsibility for my actions," she growls through serrated fangs, "but not before I see you pay for yours."

Elgar'Nan shrugs contemptuously. "I won't even do you the honor of spilling your blood, you betraying twat. Your brothers can do the job, and I will piss on the ashes."

The God of Vengeance motions for Falon'Din and Dirthamen, and the twins look at each other uneasily. Their fear of the All-Father is greater than any love they have for their sister, but Andruil is the first born, and old habits die hard. Reluctantly, the twins arm themselves, then glance at the king of the gods for confirmation.

"Do it, my sons. Obey your King."

Andruil calmly turns to face her brothers; she will not slaughter them happily, but she is determined to face the All-Father, and make him pay for the indignity he has inflicted on the Wolf God. She nods briefly as she prepares for combat, but her brothers' expressions change from calm resignation to respectful fear as their eyes focus on a point behind her. Very slowly, very carefully, the divine twins lower their weapons. An indignant gurgle rises from the All-Father's throat and Andruil turns to see him struggling in a shadow's grip.

It takes the goddess a few seconds to identify this broken form as her Lord's. Most of his flesh has been seared off by the blast, his bones splintered and blackened, so that he is mostly a thing of glistening red and glassy black bound together by roiling shadows, a semi-material cloud of Essence animated by sheer, implacable willpower. The hand that clutches Elgar'Nan's throat is substantial enough to form deep grooves in the god's pale flesh, however, and it crackles with mystical energies as the All-Father's essence is inexorably ripped from his flailing body and absorbed by the Wolf Lord. From the slowly recomposing mass of charred meat, shattered fangs and humming darkness that occupies the space where Andruil's promised should be, comes the faint mental echo of a question.

Andruil simply nods.

The devastated battlefield in the heart of Arlathan resounds with the deep, menacing growl of the Wolf Lord. To Elgar'Nan's credit, he does not beg for his life, even as it is torn away from him in great, iridescent clouds that mingle with his conqueror's essence.

The last thing Elgar'Nan sees of his kingdom is the distant figure of his wife. The God of Vengeance lifts a limp, pleading hand, but Mythal the Protector averts her gaze and ignores his plea. His anger drained at last, along with his life, Elgar'Nan forgives her. In a sense, the God of Vengeance muses as the last spark of his consciousness dissolves into nothingness, he is the lucky one.

The Wolf Lord may be ruthless, but the Trespassers are worse.


	22. Chapter 22: Old wounds

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Old wounds**

**

* * *

**

_Heathens. _

The streets were overrun with them; Gilles du Marais could feel them all around him, hiding in the shadows just beyond his reach; crawling on rooftops, running silently, smirking at the evil they wrought. He could definitely feel the unholy auras of their mages, weaving spells of fear and weakness from a careful distance. The Grand Connetable could feel his enemies, hear them, almost smell them, but he never _saw_ any of them, not a single one, not until it was too late and his unstoppable Templar army had become a battalion, the battalion a squad, and the squad a handful of demoralized men huddled together for protection.

It was entirely his fault, of course, his failure as a leader. Gilles was a veteran of a hundred skirmishes, but he lacked the tactical sense of a true commander. His instinct was to seek out the enemy, to engage and overwhelm using brute force and superior numbers. The tactics had served him well against isolated maleficarum and clueless villagers, but the enemy that broke street lamps, taunted and pelted his Templars with a deluge of projectiles, then retreated into the shadows before they could retaliate… That was something new, and deeply unsettling.

And so Gilles had sent squad after squad of Templar warriors into the darkened alleys and side streets, and when his men's battle cries had turned to calls for help, he'd invariably charged in with the bulk of his forces, only to stumble upon empty streets and discarded weapons. Every time he led his troops into such a desperate charge, the Templars' rear guard had come under fire from unseen snipers and mages ambushed on rooftops. Invariably, Gilles turned to face this new threat, and invariably, it evaporated before the Templars could bring their holy powers and heavy armament into play.

_Give me demons. Give me blood mages and open terrain and an enemy I can slice and hack until it stops squealing._

Gilles passed a trembling, armored fist over his face, all too aware of the labored breaths of the surviving Templars around him. Val Royeaux, the city that never slept, was as silent and still as the great catacombs that were rumored to run deep under it, its citizens scared into hiding by the fearless, nameless shadows that stalked its streets. Someone was sending a message to the Templars, and it was written in blood.

Twelve men. He had come out with nearly two hundred men, and now he hardly had a dozen left with him. Now and then, Gilles could hear shouts and battle cries in the distance, indicating that not all of the squads that had been separated from their commanders were dead. Obviously, though, the heathens kept them busy enough that they wouldn't come to his help any time soon. There were a few Light Bearers among those lost squads, but the Order forbade them to reveal their nature in the presence of non-initiates unless ordered so, even to defend their own lives. Gilles now regretted not giving the order in time.

What really, really aggravated Gilles was that he had not been able to sink his blade into a single enemy's flesh. It seemed impossible that two hundred Templars could be scattered and vanquished without their foes suffering any losses; yet he had still to stumble upon the corpse of an attacker. Those weren't mere men that the Templars were facing; they were too frighteningly proficient at fighting, too fast and too organized.

Gilles had his idea, oh yes he had. Gilles's parents had been warriors of some repute, chevaliers in the Empire's armies, the sort of folks who feared nothing but the Maker. Yet, Gilles remembered his father's words to him when he had left home to start his Chevalier training, before he'd found faith and a reason to live with the Templars. Young Gilles had been a brawler, eager to test his mettle against any and all who would take issues with his attitude, and his father had not entirely disapproved, but had seen fit to share with his son one last, laconic pearl of wisdom.

"Whatever you do, don't fuck with the Grey Wardens," the old warrior had said.

For all his faith in the Order, the Grand Connetable now wished he'd passed on the advice to Diane.

* * *

Leliana fell to her knees, blood streaming from the gash in her forehead where she had crashed into the cage. The bard's eyes rolled upwards, her lips formed silent words, and Nyx felt her go limp as she slipped into unconsciousness. Nyx clenched her fingers hard on the bard's hand. Leliana had taken tremendous risks for this moment, and nearly damned died for it, but she had succeeded. _Contact_ was everything.

Kneeling on the cage's filthy floor, Nyx reached for Leliana's brow. The prison was bathed in the Templars' strange Light, but in this world of searing white the bard's blood shone darkly. Rivulets of living ruby slowly trickled over pale skin, deceptively peaceful.

Leliana's blood was a gateway to power.

Nyx touched the blood, and the bard's eyes popped open as the sorceress's mind followed the crimson trail, dashed through veins and arteries, and unceremoniously took control of her body. Had Leliana been conscious, Nyx might have sought a more gentle way to meld their beings. But Leliana's soul was adrift in the Fade, lost in strange, ancient visions, and Nyx had precious little time to waste on niceties.

It felt strange to be her, to feel _her_ supple, athletic body rise and to stare at the silent, smiling elf in the cage, so small and, huh, _kind of skinny_. It felt even stranger to experience the staggering amount of memories and associations that this vision called forth in the bard's brains, the good, the bad and the erotic; the unspoken fears and the even more jealously guarded hopes. It was dangerous to lose oneself in another's thoughts, and Nyx quickly backed off, feeling a little guilty for peeping.

There was still the matter of those glowing bucket heads, anyway. Leliana's nose twitched in characteristic Nyx fashion as the sorceress weighed her options.

The Bond had channeled magic into the bard's body before, and her fighting prowess had been vastly amplified as a result; but Nyx did not want to risk more injuries to Leliana. This body was not fit for magic, but the bard's imagination and gift for music allowed her to connect to the Fade in ways that were not so different from a mage's talent. Nyx remembered listening to Leliana's music during those long, quiet evenings at camp, listening intently as she felt the Veil shiver and her own magic flare in response.

Magic and bardic arts. The former altered reality from the outside, and the latter from the inside. Two facets of the same coin. Marjolaine had been aware of the connection, of course. Nyx remembered how the bard master had been able to stun her entire party with one incredibly shrill cry.

The bard's lute wasn't here, but her voice was Nyx's to command. The sorceress tentatively started with a hum deep in Leliana's chest, followed with a clear note from the throat and lips. The bard's body responded instantly, the supple limbs moving graciously in the first steps of a slow, lascivious dance. Nyx heard an echo of a rich, hated laughter, the woman who would haunt Leliana to her last breath.

The Veil reacted as Nyx found the right note, and threads of power coiled themselves around the bard's body. There was nothing particularly melodious or elegant about the sound that escaped Leliana's lips. It was nothing but a fundamental vibration, one that talked directly to its victims' blood and cells. The Templars' Light died out as long-repressed urges flared and blood was redirected from brains to more essential areas. Glassy-eyed and trembling slightly, the warriors staggered forward like moths to a naked flame.

"Not here. In the cage," Nyx commanded, and Leliana's voice translated the order into a husky promise, weaved effortlessly into the unreal melody that echoed throughout the prison.

The cage was opened by fumbling, eager hands, and the sorceress gently let hold of the bard's body, allowing Leliana to slump against the steel bars. The Templars snapped back to full consciousness as soon as the contact was broken, but it was too late for them.

"Rest for a while, my love," Nyx whispered as she stepped out into a world of roiling power. The Veil was a storm of colors, smells and sounds, and it rushed to embrace her, welcoming her _home_. Nyx allowed herself a half-second pause to savor her rebirth, and then turned her attention to her victims.

For the first time, she saw the Light Bearers clearly, and they were a sickening sight. They were living cages, feeding off the pale light of tortured spirits; parasitic entities that believed themselves holy, but were an insult to life.

Nyx bit her lower lip and let the rich, coppery taste fill her mouth. Before her, the cage-beings braced themselves for the assault, drawing energy from the captive spirits in an attempt to smother her. But they were slow, much too slow for the Wolf Born. Even as the Light Bearers' brains started the long, conscious process of smiting her, Nyx's blood was rushing through their veins, taking control of their muscles and locking them up in a prison of quavering flesh.

Seconds later, the fragile blood vessels in the Templars' brains burst, and they fell lifeless at the sorceress's feet. A reddish mist rose from the bodies and coiled itself around Nyx's body, offering power unmatched. She willed it away with some effort, for with the power unwanted attention may come, and she was not ready to face the Dread God. The mist hissed like a spurned lover, hovered for an instant, and dissipated.

Leliana was still unconscious. Her eyes fluttered under her pale eyelids, as in dreams. The bard looked peaceful, as though she implicitly trusted her lover to watch over her sleep. Nyx knelt by her side and brushed away strands of blood-soaked hair from her brow; the wound itself was closed already, a perfect, scar-less healing that was the Bond's hallmark. The bard looked thinner than in her memories, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Nyx wondered what she had been through during these weeks – or were they months? She had lost all notion of time in this dungeon. Sweet, pigheaded fool of a bard…

There was not much else she could do, so Nyx pulled the unconscious bard's arms to her shoulders as best she could and got up, staggering under the human's weight. The elven mage of old would not have been able to lug around a human woman for long, but the Dread Wolf had wrought changes in Nyx's body, and for once, she was grateful for His gifts. Panting and groaning, the sorceress disappeared into the shadows of the tunnel.

* * *

Night has fallen on the devastated city; all is eerily quiet. Emerging from the deep shadows under the stars, the gods are gathering to bow to their new ruler, but it is a cheerless reunion. Their vast, powerful forms huddle together like hunted animals, for in fact, this is what they are. Without the Fires, the gods feel like cattle waiting for slaughter.

Andruil watches the silent assembly from her lair high in the crystal spire; her huntress's instincts tell her that the fearful die first, and yet she can't get rid of the creeping unease that has oppressed her throughout this terrible day.

Earlier, Andruil and Sylaise have woven a cocoon of healing magic for their new king, to soothe his pain and haste his recovery from a blow so terrible that she cannot fathom how he has survived. Shivering, she remembers that her Lord is not merely _divine_. He has emerged from the Abyss as an infant, shortly after the wandering Sun God returned, a thing of mewling hunger and limitless potential. The only reason Elgar'Nan spared the son of Night, the gods murmur, was the Ancestor's timeless decree against shedding kin-blood. He has been chained and exiled and smitten by the very Fires of the sun, and now…

She feels the cocoon of magic burst into nothingness, seconds before her lover's massive arms – and the hands that ripped the life from her father – close around her.

"My Queen," he growls.

"I cannot be Queen, my Lord," she reminds him gently, "not after my crime against the Ancestors."

The Wolf Lord rumbles in defiance, and Andruil worries that the fragile tower will crumble under his mirth. He is unrestrained, a savage force that neither the decrees of the gods, nor the fragile structures built by their elven slaves may contain. Yet, the little life in her is proof that _she_ may succeed where law and chains have failed.

At least she hopes so.

"The Ancestors are dead, my beloved, and I doubt your siblings will oppose me. As for old Mythal…" The Wolf Lord's voice is thick with contempt, and Andruil feels a pang of worry for her mother.

"You must spare the Protector, my Lord," she says firmly, turning to stare into the feral yellow eyes, "She had no part in Elgar'Nan's betrayal of the Sun God."

"How could I deny you, my Lady? Mythal may stay, or she can go back to weaving her spells under the sea. Her time is over."

"The time of all gods may well be over, too," she whispers, with a nod in direction of the faraway sphere where the Sun God's corpse is starting to rot, "without the Fires…"

"Without the Fires, we cannot repel the Trespassers. And since Elgar'Nan controlled the Fires, all bowed to him… How convenient."

"The old tales say they cannot be extinguished. They say that the Trespassers retreat into the Beyond, where we cannot reach them in the flesh, and then they simply come back when their strength is restored. How are we to fight such a foe?"

The Wolf Lord smiles. "Come with me," he says as he turns to the crystal bay, "and I will show you."

She wants to follow her Lord, but small, insistent hands drag her away from the scene, and a low, worried voice echoes through the crystal chamber.

"_Lel?"_

_

* * *

_

"Lel? Maker's balls, wake up already! I can't do this without you!"

Andruil lazily opened her eyes, but instead of the Wolf Lord's terrible beauty, all she saw was a tiny, tattooed elf, panting over her in some ill-lit place. Not the crystal tower; this place was very dark and smelled musty.

_No, that wasn't right… Andruil was the other, and this silver-eyed elf…_

Leliana's heart jumped in her chest, and she grabbed the sorceress by the collar of her filthy brown robes, dragging the smaller woman into a fierce kiss.

"You owe me an apology," Leliana whispered when their lips parted, anger and desire fighting for control over her better judgment, "And it had better be good."

"Yes. And I will give you that and plenty more," Nyx replied in a slightly hoarse voice, "but _please_ let's get out of here first. I have seen enough of these stinking tunnels for a lifetime, and I can't find… huh…"

Leliana smirked at the sorceress's obvious embarrassment.

"You have lost your way, haven't you?" she teased gently, "The mighty Grey Warden couldn't find her way out of her own pocket!"

Nyx's brow furrowed in displeasure, and her long, thin ears lay back very slightly, like an angry cat's. The light from a distant torch outlined her features in a rough sketch of red and black, and Leliana thought that she saw a touch of _otherness_ in her, something that had always been there, hidden under youthful softness, but was now revealing itself… Alien, yet strangely familiar.

"Seriously, Lel, this is _not_ the time to make fun of me…"

Nyx may look a little different, but she was still the same, the overly proud little mage who would rather die than admit that she was lost. Well, she wasn't getting away with it this time.

"Say it," Leliana whispered to the elf's pointed ear. The sorceress was absolutely filthy, and she obviously hadn't had a bath in _ages_, but her hair – How in Heaven had it managed to grow this long in a few weeks? Her hair somehow managed to retain its unique, wild scent. Leliana wondered what the Templars would think if they found the two of them entangled on the tunnel floor, rolling around naked in dirt and cobwebs. _Tempting…_

Nyx muttered something unintelligible, and Leliana cupped her face in her hands, grinning wickedly.

"What? I can't hear you," she whispered. The elf squirmed in frustration.

"Oh, _all right_!" Nyx groaned, "I'll say it: I am a blubbering fool, I am lost, and I need your bardic wit to save our asses. There. Happy?"

Leliana's smirk died when she realized that she was taking pleasure in Nyx's frustration. She was angry, but there would be time to settle old scores once they got to Louis's lair. By exploiting her lover's weakness to affirm her own strength, Leliana was simply repeating an old pattern. The thought left a bitter taste in her mouth.

"I'm sorry, baby. Let's go," she said in a softer voice.

* * *

"Good," Marjolaine says appreciatively as Leliana pins her to the floor. It is mid-summer in Val Royaux, which means that the slightest exertion covers their bodies in a slick film of sweat, and they've been wrestling for hours. The master bard relaxes in Leliana's hold, but the younger woman is a fast learner, and she only tightens her grip. She thinks she sees a flicker of respect in her master's eyes, and she smirks mischievously.

"Just… good?" she asks innocently, her lips brushing against her incapacitated opponent's neck, "and here I was, hoping for a more personal mark of appreciation."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Even as she lies defenseless in her grip, Marjolaine manages to make _her_ feel weak. Maybe it is the serene confidence she exhibits; or maybe it is the mocking light in her brown eyes.

Leliana smiles greedily; her belly almost aching with anticipation, she presses her lips to Marjolaine's.

Marjolaine bites her, so hard and so suddenly that she yelps in pain and struggles to push herself away, but the master bard won't have any of that. Seconds later, Leliana's shoulder is nearly dislocated and she is reduced to a whimpering heap at Marjolaine's feet. Blood flows from her injured lip, forming pretty patterns on the training mat.

"How is _this_ for appreciation?" Marjolaine asks coldly.

"I am sorry," Leliana half-laughs, half-sobs, "I didn't mean to offend… augh!"

"Wrong answer," Marjolaine snickers as she twists her pupil's arm further, "try again?"

"Ouch, Marjolaine, please _stop_," Leliana whimpers with a hint of worry, "I… I am sorry I tried to kiss you?"

"No," the master bard answers, and Leliana feels something pop in her shoulder and shrieks in genuine pain. Marjolaine lets go, and kneels by her side, gently wiping tears from her cheeks. "Do you want to know the answer?"

Leliana grinds her teeth through the pain and nods feebly. Gripping her hair with one hand, Marjolaine forces her face up, kisses her unhurriedly, then gets up and pulls on her injured arm to reset it. When the white stars stop dancing before Leliana's eyes, Marjolaine lets go of her and smiles with blood-stained lips.

"The answer, my pet, is that true bards _don't ask_."

* * *

Nyx peered out of the shadows, her lips moving to form a silent torrent of expletives when she saw the armored silhouettes guarding the entrance of the dungeon. Leliana could hardly remember ever seeing the sorceress so nervous; it was almost comical. The elf tripped on her tattered robes – rags would have been a more accurate description, for they had not been replaced since her arrival in Val Royeaux- and Leliana caught her arm, lest she fell flat on the floor and attracted the guards' attention. The bard was wearing relatively clean, albeit too large, Templar attire, but Nyx could simply not be disguised in this way.

"You look awfully nervous," Leliana whispered with a reassuring smile.

"Templars tend to do that to mages," Nyx groaned, "You know, that thing about growing up under a constant death threat?"

Leliana nodded, remembering the Warden's unease when she had led her small band of adventurers into the devastated Tower. Nyx had actually seemed relieved to find more abominations than Templars in there. Still…

"It's not the only reason, is it?"

"No. There's also the fact that I'm not sure how much I can trust my own magic," Nyx admitted with a nonchalant shrug, as though she were talking about a minor annoyance. Her voice didn't sound nearly as confident as it once had, though, and the tension in her body told Leliana a different, sadder story.

"_I _trust you," Leliana said, squeezing the elf's hand for a second before she strode into the main entrance confidently. She could feel the sorceress's worried gaze on her back as she approached the guards with long, casual strides; the men hardly glanced at her until she was on them. Then and only then did they pay attention to their gut feeling, the absence of the Lyrium's familiar pull in that skinny Templar's body. But by then it was too late. Leliana's daggers dropped from her sleeves into her hands, and the guards were dead before they had a chance to draw their weapons or call for help.

Templars may be powerful warriors, the bard reflected as she wiped the bloody blades clean, but they were unused to betrayal. Easy prey. Leliana felt no regret about the slaughter. Those men had caged Nyx like an animal; the sight of the elf's tattered brown robes floating around her emaciated body made her blood boil.

They peered into the Redoute's courtyard from the relative safety of the dungeon's door. The great steel gates were shut. Cold weather was setting in on Val Royaux, and the night air carried the promise of early snow. The guards, a dozen or so, were stomping and rubbing their hands to stave off the chill. Despite Louis's distraction, Leliana had no doubt that the guards would be joined by more Templars from the barracks at the first sign of a scuffle in the courtyard. She could feel Nyx shiver by her side, her torn robes doing little to fend off the cold. Leliana retreated into the dungeon's entrance and stripped the cape off a slain Templar; Nyx hesitated for a second, her nose twitching in distaste, then apparently decided that wrapping herself in the smell of sweat and blood was preferable to freezing – hardly.

"I suppose I could take them," the sorceress said through chattering teeth. Leliana shook her head.

"You won't have to," she said, pointing at a flight of stairs a short distance away, "We'll go through the battlements."

Nyx looked at her as though she had lost her mind.

"I _could_ fly", she said sarcastically, "but what are you going to do? Flap your arms and ask the Maker to give you wings?"

"Oh, you're quite the sassy bird; I have no doubt about that. But things may not come to that. Are you ready?"

Before the sorceress could reply, Leliana passed an arm around her shoulder and dragged her forward into the courtyard. They crossed at a brisk pace, head bent, counting on the night and their Templar capes to fool the guards, and doing a pretty good job of it, considering Nyx's size and blood-splattered garment.

They had just started climbing the stairs to the battlements when an imperious voice rang a short distance behind them.

"You! In the Maker's name, stop immediately!"

"Run!" Leliana hissed, shoving the elf so hard she nearly fell. The Templar was almost on them, and Leliana turned to face his assault, daggers coming out of their sheaths with the hiss of angry metal. Leliana ducked the incoming sword strike and struck back, missing the joint between the helmet and breastplate by a hair's width. The Templar's shield crashed into Leliana's chest, knocking the wind out of her lungs, and she fell flat on her back. A sharp hiss rang behind her, and the Templar froze, his arms and legs twitching oddly. A second later, the man was rushing down the stairs, and a pitiful moan escaped him as he charged his approaching comrades-in-arms.

Glancing up, Leliana saw blood dripping over Nyx's chin, black in the faint light of the courtyard. The elf's silver eyes gleamed with murderous rage and a hint of amusement, and Leliana thought of the divine hunters in her dreams. Down in the courtyard, a huge pillar of flames burst into existence with an avid roar, and the night resounded with the shrieks of burning men.

More flowed into the courtyard, a steady stream of armored bodies pouring in from the barracks, rallying away from the flames. Leliana jumped to her feet and gripped Nyx's shoulders, trying to drag her further up the stairs, but the sorceress resisted with surprising strength.

"Run if you want," the sorceress said coldly, her attention focused on the Templar as she prepared to unleash more death, "I am done running. I will teach the wyrmlings to respect their betters." Fire gathered at her fingertips.

_Wyrmlings_. Leliana's stomach twisted at the horribly familiar word, and the realization of what was happening washed over her in a dark wave.

"Please baby, don't…" she started, but it was too late. A blinding, fizzling meteor of pure light rose from the Templars massed in the courtyard, hissing like a demented snake as it arched high above the battlements, then fell with terrible purpose and precision. Leliana hardly felt anything when the counter-magic strike hit, but Nyx went limp under her hands. Blood gushed from the elf's nose, and she closed her eyes, moaning in pain.

_Please let her be stunned enough that I can carry her to the battlements. Please don't let her…_

A thick mist rose from the sorceress's body, cold and menacing, wriggling under Leliana's hands like carrion worms, and she recoiled instinctively from the dead touch. Nyx did not fall. She turned to Leliana, a hungry smile playing on her pale lips.

"Help me, Leliana," the sorceress pleaded mockingly; her voice was the tortured growl of iron bending under the weight of the world. Leliana stumbled back, shaking her head in denial.

Nyx blurred and vanished. Down in the courtyard, a Templar screamed as _something_, small, fast and impossibly strong, tore him apart in an explosion of blood and shredded metal. The stronghold turned into a slaughterhouse as panicked warriors hit each other in a hopeless bid to strike at the shadowy terror that methodically rent them limb from limb. Within seconds it was over, and the Presence in Nyx's body stood grinning before Leliana, covered in blood and grim remains.

"The child enjoyed this, you know," the Presence said, licking blood off its fingertips in a gesture obscenely reminiscent of Nyx finishing a crock of honey, "She's a born hunter."

"Leave her," Leliana said through clenched teeth, "and you can have me."

Moving with impossible speed, the Presence in Nyx's body seized the bard's neck in a thin, gory hand, forcing her to her knees. Small, white teeth snapped very close to Leliana's face as the dark being bent over her. Its breath smelled of hot metal and the sickly sweet smell of a fresh kill.

"I certainly can," the Presence growled, "but why would I want a mad human heifer?"

"So what do you _want_?" Leliana asked coldly. She was terrified, but also furious at the god that treated Nyx like a mere puppet. Somewhere inside this snarling body, Nyx must be conscious, and terrified beyond anything she could imagine. "Surely you have a reason for talking to a mere human?"

"Leave my garment alone. Go away. In return, I will let you be for a while, until I am done with the rest."

"And if I don't?"

The Presence shook its head, and Leliana felt a strange pull, as though she were being sucked out of her body. The world went dark, and she found herself in another place.

* * *

They came for him at last, the heathens, masked but openly wearing grey cloaks emblazoned with griffons, as though they didn't give a damn about the consequences. And maybe they didn't. After all, the Grey Wardens had been around longer than the Chantry, and much longer than the Templars.

Along with the Wardens came a few gruff-looking individuals, a ragtag collection of humans and dwarves led by a grinning, vaguely familiar ape of a half-dwarf. He and most of the humans wore Templar plate. Gilles shook his head in disgust as he realized how most of his troops must have been led astray; their Templar senses overwhelmed by the ubiquitous stench of magic, they just couldn't tell friend from foe in the night. The Wardens, dwarves and fake Templars carried staffs, cudgels, truncheons or other non-lethal weapons, and Gilles felt icy sweat trickle down his back at the idea that they wouldn't even allow him to _die_ in combat.

Raising his sword, Gilles gave the signal to his fellow Light Bearers. The Light blazed through their bodies, and they charged, ready to bring the Maker's wrath to His foes.

There was a moment of confusion among the heathens' ranks, but then a series of shrill whistles rang through the alley, half-glimpsed forms moved on the rooftops, and a great, tangled mass of ropes and heavy lead weights fell from above, dragging Gilles to the ground. He tried to get up, struggling to cut through the net with his blazing sword, but a deluge of stones, garbage and tiles fell down on him. A fist-sized stone hit his helmet, and the Maker's Light failed Gilles.

* * *

Leliana stands alone between grimy walls, staring blankly at an interstice between the stones. She _knows_ that some unfortunate prisoner's nail is wedged in there, protruding like a minuscule tombstone in a forlorn graveyard. She has seen it all before.

"No," she says aloud, her voice shrill and lost in her own ears, "this is not real."

She hears the torturers' steps shuffle through the Admiralty's dungeon. Their gruff voices and rank jokes stoke her panic, and suddenly it doesn't matter so much whether this is real or not. Leliana just wants _out_. She pats herself frantically, searching for her lockpicks, but she is wearing the tattered remains of a light dress, the one in which the guards have caught her at Marjolaine's mansion. Leliana forces her eyes shut, as if doing so could banish the memories.

_This is not real._

The voices stop before her cell, and when Leliana opens her eyes they are all here, the torture crew, come to do their job on the notorious traitor. But the Presence has added its own touch of madness to Leliana's memories, and Nyx stands among the chattering men, pale and withdrawn, bound with shimmering lyrium chains.

The fat one smiles, revealing silver fangs where rotten teeth ought to be. Leliana wonders if the skin under his collar is broken where the garrote has bitten.

"Say hello to our guest, traitor," Boulot says in a deep, almost subsonic growl, his plump hands trailing on the silent elf's hair, "the Master figured you could use some company."

"Nyx is not here. Nothing of this is real," Leliana says weakly.

"Memories are real enough," Blue Shirt cuts in, his long face as inexpressive as ever. "Don't want to share with your little friend?"

"You won't hurt her." Leliana counters, trying to sound confident despite her rising terror.

Broken Teeth shakes his head. "The Master just wants the body," he says in the same bass growl as his accomplices, "and even that is merely a convenience."

"And hey, the elf might even enjoy the show," says Boulot.

"Watching you relive it all," says Blue Shirt,

"Over and over again," says Broken Teeth,

"And then some more," says Blue Shirt,

"Unless we make a deal," Boulot concludes.

All the bard's instincts scream that she must take the deal, that there is nothing more she can do for Nyx, that anything is better than to relive the days of despair. Instead, Leliana stares at the twisted visions from her personal hell and strains to speak through her closed throat.

"I have lived with the memories. But I could not live knowing that I gave you Nyx."

There is power in words, and as she speaks, Leliana feels a semblance of calm come back to her shaken nerves. Whatever she does, she won't change the past. But maybe – just maybe- she can give her life meaning.

They rush in through the cell's door and reach for her with fumbling hands, but Leliana now sees them for what they are: unhealed wounds, shades of the past. They hiss and threaten with thin voices; they claw at her with evanescent fingers. Leliana greets pain and fear like old enemies, she walks through them as through a cold mist, and they do not follow. The grimy walls fade as she reaches for Nyx's hand.

When their souls touch, the world bursts like a bubble.


	23. Chapter 23: Pillow talk

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Pillow talk**

_Bioware owns Thedas. I created Nyx, and now she owns ME!_

* * *

Deep under the deepest vaults of Arlathan are forgotten tunnels, the great catacombs and repositories built by the Ancestors when they first came to Thedas, long before the elves. Among the gods, there are some, Mythal the Grey among them, who even speculate that the dust-filled passages and crumbling vaults predate the Golden Age, that they are vestiges of a time before the Ancestors ascended to divinity. Elgar'Nan never approved of the All-Mother's vaguely blasphemous theories, but Andruil remembers her mother's hushed voice telling wild tales of forgotten eons.

Down here, in darkness so deep it threatens to smother the Goddess of the Hunt's light, the old stories don't seem so outlandish any more. The place smells of rotting stone and desiccated carcasses.

The Wold Lord guides her through the darkness of eons with a familiarity born of old practice, and she wonders how the exiled god can be so familiar with Arlathan's underground landscape. Minutes later, they come across the explication, as they pass other, titanic tunnels. The tunnels seem to converge on a gigantic hall, a subterranean plaza carved out of sheer rock. The floor is flat and smooth, but covered in dust so thick that the gods' approach causes ripples on its surface. The walls, by contrast, are irregular and made of some brittle, dark material.

A shelter, the Wolf God explains. The Ancestors domesticated the Children of the Stone's forefathers, an eternity ago, and had them toil on a vast network of underground caves and roads, designed to keep them safe from their enemies. The Wolf God smirks in bitter irony.

"It didn't exactly work out as planned," he growls, pointing at the walls, and Andruil _sees_.

The walls are _not_ walls. They are piles of corpses. All around Andruil are the desiccated, compacted remains of the Ancestors, blackened and made brittle by their long stay in the dry atmosphere of the tunnels. Innumerable bodies, infinitely varied in size and shape, for the Ancestors were as changing as the gods are. All are frozen in the throes of violent death, their mouths dark holes open on silent screams. The sheer magnitude of the massacre – the countless _throngs_ that were slaughtered here– makes her head swim.

"So many…" she whispers, "thousands…"

"_Billions_," the Wolf God corrects, "The tunnels run through all of Thedas. Once upon a time, the Ancestors' abodes must have covered most of the land."

Andruil shakes her head in disbelief. Billions… And there are only a handful of gods left. She thinks of the child in her belly, and she growls softly, a low, rumbling sound that is a prayer and a challenge.

"The Trespassers… The Forgotten Ones… Did they do this?"

"The Trespassers, yes." He stops to look at her, his yellow eyes reflecting the light from her wings, and she thinks that her Lord looks almost sad. Surely that is impossible. "But they are not what we believe. _We_ are not what we believe."

"You speak in riddles, my Lord," Andruil protests, but the Wolf Lord ignores her questions and guides her forward, further down into the bowels of the earth, under the reproachful gaze of a dead race.

* * *

Leliana awoke to the soft, regular sound of Nyx's breath. The place was quiet, the sheets crisp and clean, and for a few contented seconds she thought she was back in the Dalish Keeper's aravel, enjoying a few days of relative peace before the Dread God and the Blight would rip it all away from her. But there were strands of long, silken hair on her arm, and the familiar sounds of a typical Val Royeaux morning rose faintly from the window.

_Val Royeaux. We made it, Maker, we made it… _

Leliana vaguely remembered the events posterior to her confrontation with the dark Presence in Nyx, hazy memories of dragging the stunned elf up stone stairs amid the dead silence of the fortress. She remembered muttering a short prayer as she clung to Nyx's body and plunged from the battlements, the shock. the icy darkness, the tiny lights of the boat, and the infinite relief when she realized that the half-blood had kept his word. Until the last minute, she had doubted Louis, expecting his revenge to come in her darkest hour. And it may yet come.

Slowly, Leliana opened her eyes, vaguely anxious that do so may break the charm, that whatever magic had brought Nyx to this sunny room in Louis's mansion might suddenly dissolve like the last visions from an early morning dream, so real one minute and gone the next.

Discs of silver were watching her from under thin, arching eyebrows. There was no trace of the Dread Wolf in there, only longing and a world of regret.

"Hey," the sorceress said softly.

"Hey," Leliana answered in the same.

"Been watching you sleep."

"So I see."

"Lel, I…" the sorceress's voice quavered, and Leliana's heart sank at the fear and guilt she read in the angular, tattooed features. She reached for Nyx, wrapping herself tightly around the small, trembling body. The feeling of the elf's skin on hers was almost electric; sensuous, in a way, but also much more than that.

"I'm so sorry," Nyx whispered bitterly. "I'm so sorry. I tried to keep Him away from you, I tried to run, to give up my magic so He couldn't reach us. I can't be with you. He will always find me, He will always…"

"Hush. It's ok, baby. He won't hurt me. I… think He _can't_ hurt me."

Leliana was surprised to hear the words escape from her own lips, but she realized that they had to be true. The Dread God had held her life in His hands, hands that were red with the blood of hardened warriors, hands that could tear through steel plate like a flaming blade through butter. But He had _not_ killed her. Instead, the god had tried to bargain with her, to scare her away with parlor tricks. Leliana felt Nyx's body relax a little, and the shaking abated.

"I'm scared," the elf sighed, "I'm scared shitless, Lel. I could resist Him, at first, but this time… He just tossed me aside, and I could only watch as he killed those people and I thought he was going to…"

"I know. He tried to make me leave you. But I'm not leaving," Leliana whispered, resolve building deep inside, "I won't let Him have you, not now, not ever."

Even though she was overwhelmed with concern, Leliana could not help notice the subtle differences in her lover's body. The elf huddled in her arms was bigger, heavier, more muscular than Nyx had been. Leliana could almost feel the _other's_ power coiled inside the sorceress, like a dark vibration at the periphery of her perception. And Leliana became aware that _she,_ too, was different from the broken bard that had left Lothering. Her senses were too sharp, she saw and heard and _felt_ with uncanny precision.

"So what do we do," the sorceress groaned in a firmer voice, "Jump into the Fade and ask Fen'Harel to please leave us alone, lest we kick His ass?"

Leliana smiled, pleased to see that Nyx was mostly back to her old self.

"Something like that, my mage. I will let you figure the details; _I_ most likely will just be following you and chronicling your high feats."

Unexpectedly, the sorceress snickered, raising her head to peer at the bard with a hesitant little smile. Her eyes were dry, and Leliana remembered that Fen'Harel had taken her tears from her, too.

"I'm not much of a Warden, am I? Running all over Thedas in fear of the Big Bad Wolf…"

Leliana silenced her with a quick peck on her pale lips.

"Even gods can feel scared, my love. What makes you a Warden is that you keep going, no matter how scared you are … At least I _think_ Wynne said that to Alistair when you made it clear you wouldn't listen."

"Well, there is that, _plus_ a healthy regimen of darkspawn blood… Oh…" The sorceress bit her lips, her expression turning somber, "Lel, there's something I have to tell you."

"Is it bad news?" Leliana asked, raising an eyebrow in mock alarm.

"In a sense…" Nyx replied with a grimace of embarrassment.

"Then it can wait," Leliana said decisively, "I think we have more pressing matters to attend now."

"Huh, I don't know…"

"Hush, Grey Warden. You have been neglecting your duties for a long time, and this bard demands compensation," Leliana whispered, her fingers trailing on the sorceress's back, "_lots and lots_ of compensation."

* * *

The place was almost entirely dark. A faint ray of light occasionally filtered under the thick, studded oak door, but most of the time he couldn't see anything. The air smelled of damp coal and decades-old dust, of things left on a shelf and forgotten, rotting slowly until became part of the ubiquitous layer of dust.

Soon, Gilles knew, he too would become part of the dust.

He tried to call the Light, as he had before, unsuccessfully, stopping only when the lyrium manacles around his wrists threatened to singe his skin off. His hopes dashed once more, Gilles slumped in the dirt, whispering a prayer.

He had no idea how long he had spent in this hole; hours maybe, maybe days. Deprived of light and sound, his senses played tricks on him, and he sometimes believed he could see faces in the dark, the long, long lineup of those he had imprisoned and tortured in his single-minded pursuit of virtue. The ghosts sneered and grinned at him, but he had nothing to tell them. Not for one second did he imagine that the faint figures could be the product of a guilty conscience. Gilles's conscience was clean, his faith unwavering. What he had done, he had done in service of the Maker, and he would do it all over again without hesitation. Still, the ghosts were unsettling, and he wished they would understand the errors of their ways and leave him alone. Especially the little ones.

Gilles started violently when he heard the door open; he cringed at the loud click of the key turning in the lock, and the light of a lantern hurt his eyes cruelly.

"Hey, look at that! Monsieur Templar pissed his pants!" A gruff voice exclaimed from behind the lantern's blinding halo.

"Well, he _is_ shackled to the wall," a low, well-modulated female voice remarked, "I don't see you doing much better in the same circumstances. How are you doing, _mon beau seigneur_?"

Gilles spat in the voice's general direction. Whatever those damned heathens wanted with him, he would not honor them with a reply. Better to let them kill him; better to be a martyr in the service of the Order, to fly proudly to the Maker's right side and…

The boot hit Gilles square between the legs, sending a wave of atrocious pain throughout his body, and he strained to double over, but the shackles wouldn't let him.

"He's holding up fine for a human," the first voice commented good-naturedly, "but this silver says he throws up at the second kick. No holding out: I can tell."

"Deal," the woman said, and the second kick landed on Gilles's shinbone with a sinister crack. Gilles howled in pain.

"Hey, that's not right! Ye're supposed to kick him in the nuts!"

"You never said anything about nuts, did you? Pay up, dwarf."

"You really can be a _pain_, Pap…"

Gilles wholeheartedly agreed.

* * *

Leliana lay on her back, arms and legs sprawled in delicious languor. She could feel Nyx's heart flutter against her breast, and she smirked in remembrance of an old verse:

_On est plus près du cœur quand la poitrine est plate._ *

It is closest to the heart, when the chest is flat. Leliana didn't share her literary musings with Nyx; the elf was rather self-conscious about these matters, although she would never admit to it. And it wasn't like small and perky held no appeal for Leliana; quite the _opposite_, in fact.

"What are you thinking?"

"That this was… incredible," Leliana answered tactfully. To be fair, incredible didn't even _begin_ to describe what they had just shared. Nyx had always been an adequate lover, passionate if a little clumsy, but the last couple of hours had been… different. Even Marjolaine's expertise could not remotely compare with this sensory onslaught. It was as though their nervous systems had melded for a short time, their bodies fused into a sensuous union that transcended perspective and individuality.

_Melded... _The idea struck a chord, deep within the bard's mind, and she turned a bewildered gaze at the smirking elf. In Leliana's mind, dozens of separate events were coming together, ones and ones adding to form… greater sums.

"You did something to me, didn't you?" she asked, although she thought she knew the answer. Confirmation came in the form of an anxious frown as Nyx raised herself on an elbow and peered into the bard's eyes. The sorceress spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully.

"I did something to _us_. I didn't exactly have a choice. You remember what happened in Fort Drakon?"

"I remember…" Leliana started hesitantly. The memories were vague and terrible. "I remember being chased by something; one of Fen'Harel's creatures, I think. Then I found you, and then…" she almost choked on the words as her memory struggled to explain what happened next… "Pain, and all went dark. I awoke in Anora's palace. You were gone."

Nyx nodded, her expression very serious.

"The thing… Fen'Harel's servant, it… it almost killed you, Lel. Put an arrow through your spine." The sorceress closed her eyes, and she spoke very fast, her voice flat, striving to finish the story before her emotions could catch up. "In fact, it _killed_ you. I couldn't heal that. Nobody could. But I could not let you go. So I tried a ritual. Blood magic. I melded our life force; I took you to the brink of the Beyond, and we came back... _together_."

"Together?" Leliana repeated blankly, feeling strangely lightheaded. _It killed me…_

The sorceress nodded. "Yes. We are… bound, I think you could say. My blood is in you; my life force is what keeps you alive. Tevinters – the mages who invented that ritual – believed that all things were finite, and defined by a few… essentials. Space, time, stuff like that. I'd say we share _time_, a common lifespan. That's how you can heal yourself so fast: you draw from that life blood; a common time pool, if that makes sense to you."

Leliana frowned. She wasn't sure this made any sense at all. The sorceress sensed her hesitation, and simply shook her head.

"Look," Nyx said, "I don't think the theory matters. The important thing is that we share one life. The good news is that you seem to be able to draw on some of my… talents, including some of Fen'Harel's magic…"

Leliana waited. If _this_ was the good news, she just might start screaming when she heard the _bad_ news.

"… Not to mention the… huh, side effects we have just observed," the sorceress concluded with a fleeting grin; then her expression turned somber.

"The bad news," she continued hesitantly, "is that when my heart stops, so will yours. Also… I think I may have passed the darkspawn taint on to you. I'm sorry…"

Nyx kept talking, but Leliana couldn't hear the words. Her mind was stuck on two words even as her stomach heaved and she struggled not to throw up.

_Darkspawn taint. Oh, Maker. It's in me me me _

The ceiling receded to form a high vault and she was on the altar, the stone slick with the clotted blood of the Revered Mother and the thicker, black pestilence that was darkspawn blood, and that _thing_ with the silver eyes…

"_Lel?"_

Leliana lashed out at the tainted being before it could spew its poison; her palm crashed into the leprous, pug-nosed face, and the hurlock flew back, falling from the altar, and hit the floor with a dull crack and a cry of pain.

"_Lel, please…"_

Leliana was on the hurlock, straddling it and preparing to crack its skull on the pavement, but the thing kept calling her name in a choked voice and _oh Maker that was Nyx with blood gushing from her broken nose_. The sorceress's eyes narrowed dangerously, and Leliana opened her mouth to say how sorry she was, but too late. A warm hand, soft yet irresistible, pulled Leliana backwards and upwards, forbidding all movement.

Suspended in mid-air by the force field, like a fly stuck in amber, Leliana watched the elf get to her feet laboriously. Nyx's right arm hung numbly, and she appeared to be in a lot of pain, but there was the shadow of a smile on her lips when she approached Leliana.

"I still owe you an apology," the sorceress said softly, "you can break my legs afterwards, if you want. So… damn, this _hurts_… here goes…"

Nyx took a big breath.

"I am sorry. I am sorry for Fen'Harel, I am sorry for the taint, and it drives me crazy to think that I have put you in harm's way. More than anything, I am sorry for running on you, for letting you face danger alone. Had I stayed with you in Denerim…"

Nyx shook her head, as if to interrupt her train of thoughts, the relentless multitude of _what ifs_ that crowded her mind.

"I don't know if that would have changed anything. We have been acting out a ritual of sorts, and I don't think we had much of a choice. Anyway… I tried to make it all right. I tried to cut my connection to the Fade, hoping that you could be safe from Him. It was a mistake, but I had to try. I am sorry for everything, but I am _not_ sorry for what I did on Fort Drakon. I could not let you go, and I would do it all over again, because you mean everything to me. There, I said it. Now I'm going to free you and you can break my _other_ arm if you want," Nyx concluded with a grimace.

The sorceress raised an eyebrow, and Leliana felt the cocoon of magic around her start to ebb away.

"Oh, and one more thing," Nyx groaned, her face increasingly pale from the pain in her broken arm, "I will kill that fucker Fen'Harel. I don't know how, but I promise you, I _will_."

* * *

Breakfast was fun.

They were joined by Zevran, Louis and his gang in the mansion's princely banquet room, a sprawling extravaganza that testified to the spy master's considerable wealth and immoderate love of the so-called "rebirth" school of painting en vogue under Celene's rule. Taking a seat at table which looked like it had been crafted out of a single, immense tree, and then inlaid all over with ivory and lyrium beads, Leliana reflected that Louis showed excellent taste in the choice of the paintings, and an exceptional lack of sensitivity in their display, the general feeling being that any available surface _had_ to be covered in art.

Zevran's smirk when he greeted Nyx was almost insufferable; obviously the Antivan was aware of the little… incident of the morning, and considered it a rather appropriate retribution for all the trouble he and Leliana had been through. Incredibly enough, Nyx took her fellow elf's ironic smirk and none-too-subtle innuendos in stride, driving Leliana to briefly wonder exactly how close those two had grown during the final days of their struggle with the Blight.

Nyx then turned to Louis, Papillon and Marteau, and Leliana proceeded to making quick introductions – Nyx had already met Marteau earlier in the morning when the dwarf had been called on to fetch a healer, but she detailed the other two with a great deal of curiosity. Leliana noted that Papillon looked almost amiable this morning; perhaps the scuffle with Nyx had finally convinced her that Leliana was not here to try and take her place at Louis's side. At least, Leliana hoped so.

"Ah, here she is, the famed Slayer of Urthemiel. Welcome to my humble abode, Mademoiselle Nyx," The half-dwarf purred, bowing deeply with his customary mix of exaggerated civility and thinly veiled arrogance. Nyx raised an eyebrow, trying to decide whether that strange-looking fellow was making fun of her.

"Hi," she said flatly, "Lel said you helped her get me out. Thanks. "

Louis smirked and decided that he liked Fereldans' approach to protocol.

"Yeah," he replied with a hint of a dwarven drawl, "I guess you could say we have one common friend, and a lot of common enemies."

"Does that make us friends?"

After meeting Marjolaine, Nyx had a visceral distrust of anyone linked to Leliana's past, and she wanted to make this crystal-clear for everyone in this room. Leliana clicked her nails on the ornate table, hesitated to gently rebuke Nyx, and opted to stuff her face with Orlesian delicatessen instead. It was quite cute of the elf to be so obviously protective of her. _Cute, and irritating as hell._

Louis shrugged. "That makes us nothing. But I and my employers have invested a lot of resources in freeing you, and we would appreciate your help in dealing with a certain Chantry faction."

"What kind of help do you need? Got any archdemons to slay?" the sorceress asked somewhat distractedly. She had spotted what appeared to be honey in a jar, and her nose twitched greedily. Picking on the expression, Zevran handed her the goods with an amused grin.

"Not right now," Louis chuckled good-naturedly, "for now I'd like to pool our knowledge. I have information. You have information. I talk, you talk, we both learn something."

"Sounds good..." Nyx mumbled before she unceremoniously dug into the jar with her spoon, eating with enthusiastic little groans that reminded Leliana of a feeding nug.

"You may want to try pastries with that," Louis suggested, "or bread?"

"Nah, I'm fine," Nyx replied, her chin dripping with sticky goodness, "haven't _tasted_ anything in weeks. I'll stick to the essentials."

* * *

Diane stands amid the ransacked archives in the deep vault under Chateau des Anges. For once, her diminutive, restless eyes are very still, staring at the chest where most of the Light Bearers' correspondence with their allies used to be stored. The chest is empty, but for a brown apple core, gnawed very thin by small, methodical teeth.

Diane already knows about the humiliation inflicted on her Templars in the deserted streets of Val Royaux. A number have perished; more were captured alive by the men and women wrapped in grey cloaks, given a solid beating, drugged and then dumped, naked and delirious, in the very posh Gold Quarter, a stone's throw from the gates of the Great Cathedral. Those survivors are currently held by the City Guard on charges of disorderly conduct and public nudity, without a doubt this is _someone's_ idea of a practical joke.

Grand Connetable Gilles du Marais, Commander of the Orlesian Templars and the very spearhead of the Light Bearers' military might, is missing. Diane entertains no illusion that he will ever be seen alive again; the same shadowy hand that helped the Wardens organize their little vendetta has him in its grip, and it will squeeze until Gilles is no more. Diane has all confidence in Gilles's faith to sustain him throughout the ordeal. The believer in Diane knows that one day they will meet again, and rejoice in the Maker's Light. The colder part of her mind must admit that the man was a disastrous choice to lead the Templars. For all his dedication and political connections, Gilles was weak, and the Light Bearers will not miss him.

Diane sees Celene's hand in the events of the night; nothing of this magnitude happens in the city without the Empress's knowledge. At the very least the impious bitch has agreed to close her eyes while the Grey Wardens had their revenge. Diane can almost picture the scene: the Empress must have giggled like a schoolgirl while her pet mongrel pantomimed the Templars' dishonor.

Diane is not overly afraid of the Empress. Diane knows about the much more confidential massacre in the Redoute, and of today's long list of bad news, this is the only one that threatens the Light Bearer's leader hold on her sanity.

Not a single man or woman in the Templar stronghold has survived. The corpses in the dungeons have been taken down by blade and magic, and at least one of them has been killed by the foul creature that called itself a vanguard. But the others… The others have been torn apart by a force that slaughters men like cattle. The ones in the courtyard tried to fight. The others, the servants in the kitchen, the smiths, the maids, the imprisoned mages… They didn't try to fight, but they were massacred all the same. None of them tried to flee, suggesting that the whole butchery must have taken place in _seconds_.

Diane's inquisitors have brought back a collapsed Templar helmet, smeared in dried blood and crumpled to the dimension of a grapefruit, and Diane has gazed at the deep indentations in the crushed metal, the absurdly fragile imprint of tiny fingers. She has wondered if her enemies have the slightest idea of what they have unleashed.

Diane casts a last glance at the drying apple core and strides out of the vault. Within moments, Chateau des Anges erupts with frantic activity. Clerks busily pack crates of documents; Templars pile up dry wood in the deep dungeons under the gardens, indifferent to the prisoners' anguished calls. In the vast auditoriums, inquisitors listen religiously as instructions are laid out for them. Messengers rush out of the sprawling grounds, and a host of carrier pigeons take their flight, gray and white wings fluttering against the low snow clouds. From the window of her tidy office, Diane watches them disappear on the horizon, her mind still and peaceful once more. There is no going back now.

The Light Bearers are going to war.

* * *

* Verse by Louis Bouilhet.


	24. Chapter 24: Coconut pudding

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Coconut pudding

* * *

  
**

_Big thanks to all who read, review and generally enjoy this little story. _

_NB: edited - TWICE, MEH - for the part with Elise (now a new char named Sandra), because it didn't make much sense after all. Sorry if that means you received 2 alerts..._

_Thanks a lot to Lehni who spotted the flaw (I thought the idea was cool, but upon second reading it was just goofy).  
_

* * *

_A mob's intelligence is inversely proportional to its numbers. _

This was one of the first things Patrice Vellin had learned during his training as an inquisitor.

Were your average Orlesian asked about inquisitors, they would probably have told tales of brown-clad, severe figures passing judgment on the faithful from the high spheres of their pulpit.

Were your average city guard asked about inquisitors, they would have told tales of nosy professionals with a knack for interfering with current investigations and a scary proficiency with interrogation tools.

But inquisitors were so much more.

The dashing young priest, with his stellar eloquence and deep concern for the poor and discontent that flooded his dispensary in the Crassieres, one of the poorest and least reputable disctricts in Val Royaux, was as far as anyone could get from the popular idea of an inquisitor. So were his colleagues, whether they had been chosen to infiltrate scholarly circles, Chantry cloisters or noble families' chapels. The Inquisition's tendrils ran deep, and they ran all through all layers of society. Whether to consider it an organ of salvation or a fast-growing tumor was highly subjective.

Patrice passionately believed in the salvation theory.

His job in the Crassieres was twofold: one, to keep a thorough accounting of all discontents and potential heretics. Two, to relay the Inquisition's message to the vast masses of the poor and the discarded, the reformed and the not-so-reformed, the many whores and the few chaste, the bitter and the _bitterer_.

Patrice offered salvation and free healing at the cost of just a little patience, a little time spent listening to his sermons. And it wasn't like listening to him was an ordeal: Patrice spoke clear and plain, he talked the common folks' talk. He knew their preoccupations with taxes and levies, with the unwanted babies they had to leave at the Chantry's doors, with the abusive husbands and the cheating wives. And always, the faithful went away with a little comfort, and _more_ worries.

For in the past few months, Patrice's message had changed significantly, moving far and away from the common preoccupations with good morals and the prevention of infectious diseases. These days, the faithful went home with the vague impression that their rightful share of Orlais's prosperity was being pilfered by impious, libidinous courtiers, that tax collectors were running amok and that the Empire was being sold to the elves and the foreigners. As for the plague… The plague was a sign of the Maker's wrath, plain and simple.

Patrice's message was not an isolated voice in the city's underbelly. Every day, the voices of thousands of inquisitors relayed Diane's voice throughout Orlesian society. The words were different, tweaked to suit the particular needs of the listeners depending on petty factors like class and education, but the baseline was the same.

The baseline?

_Down with the Empress._

_

* * *

_

The afternoon was already well on its way when Louis finished summarizing his discoveries about the shadowy Chantry faction he was striving to uncover, based on months of covert work by his agents and the treasure trove of correspondences _brilliantly_ unearthed by Master Arainai and Mistress Papillon. The attendance was small, but professional: apart from Leliana, Nyx and Zevran, Louis's usual accomplices were all here, as well as the Orlesian Commander of the Grey and, surprisingly enough, Alistair, looking utterly lost among the conspirators. The former Templar kept casting nervous glances at the Commander of the Grey. He was obviously concerned that the council may turn into an examination of his defection.

The enemy, Louis went on to explain, was well-disciplined, had agents all throughout Thedas, and their contacts with various factions seemed to indicate an unhealthy interest in politics, especially Orlesian politics. In fact, several elements pointed to a plot involving some of the best-known and oldest noble houses of Orlais. By Louis's side, Marteau grinned. Leliana suspected that a detailed list of names would be transmitted to Louis's unknown protectors within hours. Heads would start rolling before nightfall.

But as for the enemy's deeper motivations, Louis admitted with a hint of frustration, they were still a mystery. They were somehow linked with the current plague epidemics; a plague that was evidently more of a magical curse than a disease.

The book Leliana had found in the Redoute's dungeons was badly damaged by its immersion in water; there may be some answers coming from there, and the book was currently being restored and decrypted by experts. Nyx raised an eyebrow at Leliana, and the redhead shrugged. The sorceress's expression said a lot about the trust she placed in any expert that wasn't _herself_.

And of course, the master spy concluded, the enemy exhibited an intense interest in Elven lore and above all, for a certain Grey Warden.

All eyes converged on Nyx.

The sorceress fidgeted with her raven hair, hesitating. The presence of the Warden Commander threw her off a little. Loghain may have been the one to strike the final blow, but Nyx was widely reputed to be the guiding hand behind the strike, and the rumors of her blood magic had already reached Orlais. At some point, the whiskered man in front of her would start asking questions about the miraculous survival of both Fereldan Wardens.

_Screw that. What's the worse that can happen? The Wardens will try to arrest me? Let them try. _

Nyx rose defiantly, looking pale and gaunt in her second-hand elven dress. The sorceress categorically refused to wear robes of any kind, ever again, and the servant clothing was the only thing Marteau could find on such short notice, although Leliana had promised, with a positively _insanely_ wide grin, to take her shopping.

"Okay," Nyx rasped, "Ever heard of the elven god, Fen'Harel? I think my parents were priests of the Dread Wolf…"

Nyx and Leliana had discussed the situation at length, and the sorceress's argument had proven the strongest. They needed allies badly, and more importantly, they needed access to libraries, mages, _knowledge_. They needed Louis's protectors, and they would have to trust him for now… within reasonable limits. And so Leliana had come up with a carefully edited version of the story, one that pointed out to the Chantry searching for the descendants of the Wolf Cult while conveniently leaving out the more embarrassing parts, such as the very real possibility for Nyx to turn into a homicidal deity before dinner.

When Nyx was done talking, Leliana studied the assistance for a while, searching for signs that the story had caught on. Apart from Zevran's slightly wider smirk, all faces were serious. Louis, of course, was undecipherable.

"Oh, good," Alistair blurted in genuine relief, "I was afraid it had something to do with your blood magic… Augh!" The former Templar let out a little cry of pain as Leliana's boot scraped his shin. Had Nyx's eyes been crossbows, Alistair's brain matter would no doubt have ruined a number of priceless works of art.

"No," Nyx groaned, "the blood magic comes from selling _your_ soul to an idiocy demon. He said you were quite the catch. Now that this is out of the way," the sorceress said as she turned to Louis, "I hear you have a prisoner."

The master spy nodded.

"Gilles du Marais. Head of Orlesian Templars… He most likely got the job by poisoning the previous Connetable with concentrated lyrium; the old guy's janitors swear he positively glows in the dark. Pap and Marteau have been working on Gilles, unsuccessfully. Please believe me when I say the man has to be _very_ committed to secrecy. Of course," Louis added with a polite nod in Nyx's direction, "now that we have a blood mage among us…"

"I'd love to meet him," Nyx rasped with a sinister smile. Alistair opened his mouth to say something, but the Commander of the Grey silenced him with a quick glance from below bushy eyebrows.

Leliana looked away. She wished she were naive enough see only the good in Nyx: her unfaltering loyalty, her seemingly boundless thirst for affection. Unfortunately, the eagerness in the sorceress's voice reminded her of a more complex reality, one where the line between cruelty and necessity was more than a little blurred.

Leliana was also quite aware of the importance of getting information, and a little voice in the back of her head reminded her that she wasn't all that unhappy to let Nyx do the dirty job. There would be no talk about what was going to happen in the cellar; later on Nyx would seek Leliana, they would chat and make love and simply enjoy each other's presence and, in the end, there would be no judgment. It was, and it had always been, better this way.

"I think I'll be going for a walk," she said as she got to her feet, "Alistair, would you care for the company? Zev?"

Alistair nodded and got up, but Zevran helped himself to another mug of thick Antivan coffee – he had been positively _soaking up_ the stuff all morning, although he showed no sign of it acting on his system- and leaned back in his chair.

"Grazie mille, bellissima, but I think I'd like to be present when the Warden meets that Templar. It should be fun, no?"

"Suit yourself," Leliana muttered as she strode out of the banquet hall.

* * *

She watches Marjolaine get up. She loves the way Marjolaine moves, every gesture fluid and seemingly calculated to accomplish its goal with maximal efficiency. She has never seen a cat move more gracefully, or more lazily, than her master. Leliana has tried to put the feeling in writing, but all of her attempts have ended up torn and crumpled in the fireplace. Words just can't express the poetry that is Marjolaine.

Marjolaine smiles to her apprentice; thin sunrays from the Venetian shades play on her face. Her brown eyes refract the light with an almost yellow tinge, and the image of a great cat crosses Leliana's mind again, the beast alert, beautiful and oh so lethal. One never knows what is going on behind those eyes; every glimpse at the panther's soul is gained at the risk of the intrepid explorer's life, and always, always, comes at a price.

Leliana already knows that she cannot kill her. Even if she could summon the willpower to strike at the master bard, she will never, ever catch her unawares. Even when Marjolaine consents to let her apprentice pleasure her – and it is a rarely granted privilege, one Leliana has to _earn_ – the tension in her body is always present, right under her skin like a predator reclining under thick foliage; unseen, but perfectly aware.

Marjolaine never sleeps. Sometimes she dozes off for a few minutes, whether in bed or in her richly decorated carriage, but even then the faintest hint of movement is caught by the master bard's restless senses, pinned mercifully on a white wooden board and neatly stored in the deep recesses of her mind, ready to be used in case of need. Leliana feels increasingly certain that even a crossbow bolt fired from a distance would not do the trick. Marjolaine's sheer scorn would wither it before it reaches its target.

More importantly, Leliana doesn't _want_ to kill her. The budding seductress has had to use every trick and deceit in her book to even get the older bard's attention. Even after they became lovers, Marjolaine has made her work to get her attention, panting for her approval like a well-trained poodle. Leliana kept giving of herself, giving always more, until she thought there was nothing left to give, and then Marjolaine asked for more, and who could deny Marjolaine?

There is comfort, and safety too, in the knowledge that she belongs to Marjolaine. And then there is the constant pain of knowing that Marjolaine refuses to open up to her. And then there is more fight for her approval, because maybe she will open up in the end.

Leliana has been playing a dangerous game with Louis for some time now. She has been leaking carefully selected bribes of information, always careful to reveal just enough that the half-blood would keep asking for more. She has felt his mild reluctance as she took him to her bed time and again, striving to lure him into a false sense of control. And all the while, over the course of months, Leliana has been keenly aware that she was merely stalling, running from an inevitable disaster. Sooner or later, her betrayal is going to catch up with her, and she knows what the dwarven cartas do to traitors. Leliana knows what must be done, but she cannot quite bring herself to strike at the hand that saved her from misery.

"I have a surprise for you," Marjolaine purrs as she puts on a purple silk dressing gown.

"A surprise? For me?" Leliana cooes. Her mind is racing; Marjolaine can't possibly know that today is her birthday. _Can she?_

Marjolaine shrugs.

"Yes, for you, Leliana. I don't see anybody else in here with us today, no?"

"Hmm, no, and I like it this way," Leliana purrs with a zest of provocation, "I like having you all to myself."

The master bard's gaze turns icy.

"It's not all about what _you_ like, kitten. You have to learn to control your emotions; right now your possessiveness is sorely inadequate… Especially in the Admiral's presence."

Leliana frowns at the memory of the paunchy officer straddling Marjolaine. The young bard has been overly attentive to his needs, mainly to try and keep him off her lover. But now she can see how this irks Marjolaine; the Admiral is an influential man, and the master bard doesn't want to lose her grip on such a useful pawn.

"I am sorry," she groans through her teeth. _But he doesn't deserve you,_ she adds mentally.

"Such anger… Its suits you well, I think, but it is like other masks: one must know when to wear it, and when to keep it hidden," Marjolaine chides with a sunny smile. Leliana's possessiveness flatters her vanity, after all. "So? Shall we go and see your surprise?"

Leliana hurriedly puts on a simple green dress and follows Marjolaine down the wooden stairs of the mansion; the blond oak feels warm and familiar under her naked feet. Downstairs, through the entrance hall decorated with precious Qunari chinaware, on to the kitchen, and Marjolaine stops by the cellar's stairways, a mischievous smile on her sensuous lips.

"My… surprise is in the _cellar_?" Leliana asks hesitantly. Suddenly she feels very cold in the light summer dress.

Marjolaine nods, her smile widening on pearly teeth, and Leliana thinks of a panther baring its fangs. If Leliana tries to run now, the panther will catch her in one lazy leap, and _tear her apart_.

Lanterns have been lit in the cellar, and Leliana slowly starts down the stairs, noticing a faint whiff of spoiled meat.

"Marjolaine, I…"

"Come on, Leliana. Your surprise is waiting," the master bard replies with a gentle push on her shoulder. Her eyes are as cold as a stalking cat's. Leliana's inner voice screams that Marjolaine knows, that she has grown tired of the waiting game, and that the surprise is nothing but a shallow grave_. _She resumes her descent, feeling the other woman's gaze burning holes in the back of her neck.

The cellar is ill-lit, but very clean, and there is no hole in the ground. Leliana turns to Marjolaine, trying to hide her fear.

"So," she asks in a poor little voice, "where is the surprise?"

From the furthest corner of the cellar, a terrorized cry answers her.

* * *

"She didn't tell us everything."

Louis's tone was flat, matter-of-factly, without a trace of frustration or anger. The master spy had silently caught up with Leliana and Alistair, and they were now walking together along a tree-shaded canal between high, decrepit stone buildings. Leliana shrugged.

"She told you as much as she could. She doesn't fully understand it, either."

"Aye." The half-blood stayed silent for a moment. "Red," he groaned, "I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. Those guys – let's call them the Order, for lack of a better word – they're trying to push Orlais back to the days of theocracy and Exalted Marches. They're trying to destroy everything Celene stands for, including the right for dwarves and elves to live decent lives."

"I didn't know you cared about Orlais. _Or_ dwarves _or_ elves."

"There's a great deal you don't know about me."

"_That _is the problem. You would like us to trust you, but we don't even know who you are working for."

"Thanks for the lesson about trust. Coming from you, that's rich."

"There is a difference between _trusting_ and _using_, Louis."

"Right," Alistair asked, "I think this is the moment when I'll leave you to stab each other like sneaky … bards I guess."

"We're fine, milord," Leliana quipped, "We will give you a fair warning before daggers start flying around."

"Milord?" The bastard prince looked pained. "You never called me that in Ferelden!"

"Yeah, but this is Orlais," Louis cut in, "we pay attention to good manners here."

"Even when you slit each other's throats?" Alistair asked, rolling his eyes in disbelief.

"Especially at such times," Leliana confirmed, and the tension between the rogues seemed to dissipate as they smiled at some shared memory.

"Hell, I miss the good old times," Louis growled in old Val Royen, the slow, thickly accented dialect that is barely spoken any more, save by thieves and bards.

"_I_ don't," Leliana said in the same, trawling idiom, "but for what it's worth, I'm sorry it had to end the way it did."

* * *

She stares at the bound, trembling figure in the corner. Marjolaine lights a lantern, and the pale yellow flame reveals an aged face, the thick makeup so streaked by tears that it looks like the terrified woman is melting. The grey hair is wildly entangled in a complex network of pins and wire, the vestiges of an elaborately extravagant hairdo the likes of which have fallen out of fashion for _at least_ three months. In spite of the years, the tears and the filth, this _is_ a familiar face. The last time she has seen Lady Cecile's business associate, the older woman has complimented her on her singing and on growing up to be such a fine girl. Now Lady Sandra sits bound and crying in Marjolaine's cellar.

"Lady Sandra?" Leliana blurts, "but how? Why, Marjolaine?"

"Ah," Marjolaine snickers, "why indeed? Maybe you should ask her."

Lady Sandra cringes at their voices and babbles incoherently, offering gold and promises of silence if they will only please, please let her go. Marjolaine steps to the whimpering woman and deliberately slaps her across the face before turning to face Leliana.

"See? _This_ is how you ask, kitten. Use the palm of your hand; your knuckles will thank you for it."

Leliana steps hesitantly into the lantern's light, red hair blazing, and the prostrate prisoner's eyes widen in shocked recognition.

"Leliana?"

Leliana opens her mouth to tell Lady Sandra that this is all a mistake, that she would never hurt one of Lady Cecile's friends, that everything is going to be all right, and then the woman speaks again and the words catch in Leliana's throat.

"I'm sorry, Leliana, oh Maker I'm sorry, I told her I would get her the money, I told her but she wouldn't listen and I'm so sorry…"

"Wait, what?" None of this makes any sense to Leliana. "What are you sorry for?"

Lady Sandra falls into a sobbing fit and Marjolaine tut-tuts once, then picks up a bucket and douses her prisoner in cold water.

"The girl asked you a question," she says very coldly.

"I'm sorry I killed her. She wanted her money back, and I told her to wait, that I would get it in time, but she did not listen… It was not my fault…"

A long shiver creeps along Leliana's spine, and she kneels to bring her face against Sandra's, very close in spite of the snot and tears that sprinkle generously. She feels Marjolaine push something into her hand; cold, hard metal. Leliana's lips tremble a little, but her hand is very steady on the small truncheon as she shows it to Sandra.

"Who. Did you. Kill." She says in a flat voice.

"Cecile. It's not my fault… She wanted her money…"

"_Liar_." Leliana's head spins furiously as she remembers the circumstances of Cecile's death. Cecile was killed in her upstairs room during a reception. Leliana had been singing to entertain guests. The killer had to be very strong, the city guards said when they came in to investigate; Leliana remembers her pain and anger at their lack of respect. _The burglar_ _snapped the old lady's neck like a rabbit's_.

Sandra could not have done it, not by herself at least.

Marjolaine tut-tuts again, takes the truncheon from Leliana's hand, and shows it to Sandra, eliciting a frightened whimper from her victim.

"_How_ did you do it?" she proposes helpfully as she hands the truncheon back to Leliana.

Sandra stops sobbing and looks at Leliana strangely; she almost seems more scared of the memory than of her current predicament.

"The half-blood," Sandra whispers, "I hired the half-blood."

Leliana hears Marjolaine's soft steps move up the stairs to the kitchen, leaving her alone with her confusion. The metal truncheon feels very heavy in her hand, the weight of lies and betrayal. Slowly, Leliana raises the weapon. Marjolaine pauses at the cellar's door, and her voice cascades down the wooden stairs like ice-cold water.

"Happy birthday, kitten."

* * *

Leliana turned to the half-blood, noticing for the first time how the years had streaked his temples with grey. A short distance down the canal side, Alistair busied himself by mock-sparring with his bodyguard, the ubiquitous, if hardly seen, Toast. The dwarf and the prince seemed to have fun, in spite or because of their considerable size difference.

"Why did you help me?" she asked softly.

"I happened to need your help."

"No, I mean: why did you help me get out of… out of the Admiralty?"

"Why didn't _you_ kill me properly when you had a chance?"

There was a hint of reproach in the question. Leliana shrugged.

"Maybe because I knew that Marteau and the gang would not have left me alone. Maybe because I owed you. Or maybe because I missed."

Louis scratched the blue stubble on his cheek, looking strangely embarrassed.

"Yeah, well, same here. I missed, and I owed you."

* * *

Louis scratches the scar on his chest distractedly. Spring is quite damp in Val Royaux, and humidity tends to bother his ribs where Leliana's arrow punched through, four years and counting ago. Funny, how bones have a memory of their own.

The half-blood's muscular frame is uncomfortably compressed in a chair facing the window of the rooms he rents in the Colline quarter. Near-lethal injury notwithstanding, the past couple of years have treated him kindly. One could say that Louis's brush with death has given him a new lease on life; his wound was hardly healed that he was back into Little Kal Sharok, taking hold of businesses, hunting the Nuglets into quasi-extinction and stomping the minor families into submission. The streets have been painted several shades of red with the blood of the gang wars, and Louis is now an extremely wealthy man.

_Wealth is not enough. _

Once illiterate, Louis has now taken to writing, passable erotic poetry and decent tragedies, and has spent a great deal of time and money making his name known through literary circles. Val Royeaux's high society, always hungry for the next sensation, has taken a liking to the strange, harmless-looking mongrel. Haughty noblemen call him _my good man_, and invite him into their palaces with a little thrill. Scholars theorize that his talent proves the superiority of his human parentage over his dwarven ancestry. Louis selflessly works to the improvement of the human species by spending a great deal of time with the noblemen's wives and the scientists' daughters.

_Fame and debauchery are not enough. _

So when a mysterious man informs him that his employer requires help with matters involving the Orlesian military, Louis pricks up his ears, smelling power play. An agreement is reached: the man's employers will close their eyes on Louis's other activities, and he will help them with their dirty laundry. A few months later, officers have fallen on their swords, an Antivan diplomat and his family have been sent home in shackles, the Crows are licking their wounds and Louis has had his first audience with the minister of War. Now Louis is more or less at the head of the Empress's secret police.

Louis scratches the scar again. For the past four years he has been keeping tabs on Marjolaine's activities. According to his own complex, unwritten code of honor, he cannot strike back at Red. When the young bard spared his life, he found himself in her debt, and Louis has risen from street urchin to his current position by keeping a careful accounting of rights and wrongs. At least, that is how he justifies his actions to himself; if there is a deeper truth, it is hidden from him.

But just because he will not seek _revenge_, doesn't mean he will not do his job. Marjolaine has been overstepping the line for some time, selling secrets she procures through her high-born, increasingly senile lover and a string of clerks at the Admiralty. Details about the Empress's shipyards and Jader's defenses have been leaked, and Celene is not amused. The only reason the Admiral and his mistress are not rotting in a dungeon yet is that even Celene needs a modicum of proof to act against an imperial cousin.

Louis raises an eyebrow as he catches sight of the bait: a middle-aged, frail man wearing the navy blue robes of an Imperial clerk, hesitantly walking home after a day spent shedding cold sweat and watching over his shoulder. The man has been acting as an intermediary for the Antivans for years; Louis's men have had a short, painful chat with him a few days ago, and he has delayed the payment he owes Marjolaine in exchange for the promise of protection.

The bait glances nervously left and right and disappears into the building opposite Louis's. Moments later, he emerges into his fourth-floor apartment, pours himself a shot of brandy and drops onto a chair, looking very miserable and discouraged.

Louis smirks as the bedroom door opens and a lithe form steps in. The bait jumps to his feet, spilling his drink, but the assassin strikes him with a gloved hand, throwing him onto the table. Steel pumps in a rhythmic, almost sensuous motion, and the bait goes limp. The killer takes a sip from the brandy bottle, and Louis catches a flash of red hair under the hood.

Red must have searched the room before the bait's return, but the man has been instructed to keep the documents with him at all times. Seconds later, Red pockets the blood-stained envelope, sealing her bardmaster's fate.

Red's intervention is mildly puzzling; Louis expected Marjolaine to handle the matter by herself. It doesn't really matter. The city guards have been tipped to search the target's home at sunset; by that time Marjolaine will have taken delivery of the documents. The guards have been told to let Red go. If she still has an ounce of common sense, she will not try to fight them. If not, well… stupidity is a major failure in a bard.

Louis gets up from his chair, stretches lazily and walks downstairs. His carriage, worn, unassuming and devoid of any marking, is waiting in a rear alley. He ought to feel quite smug about his plan; soon, he will have Marjolaine and her whole network in the palm of his hand. Still, as the carriage inches his way along Val Royeaux's crowded streets, the master spy can't help feeling nervous. Sprawled on the leather seat, Louis reaches for the silver flask in his breast pocket and takes a long, hard swig. The fiery comfort rushes down his throat and stomach, soothing his nerves momentarily.

_What could possibly go wrong?_

_

* * *

_

Leliana nodded. She felt no anger, only sadness, and something like relief. The pieces of her past had finally fallen together, and it was her choice to decide what to do with them.

Louis stood just within striking distance, his relaxed stance just as telling as the cold gleam in his slanted eyes. He was stronger, more experienced, yet Leliana knew that she could take his life if she chose to. As summoned by the thought, a wisp of Nyx's darkness surged in her veins, buzzing with the anticipation of bloodshed. The canal's murmur abated, and the falling leaves stopped their course in mid-air.

One flash of steel, and her retribution would be complete. One splash of blood; one more life claimed by this... stupid, meaningless game of intrigue. One more life claimed by Leliana's past. Retribution, endless, remorseless… and ultimately _useless_.

Slowly, Leliana exhaled, letting go of the last of her pain, letting go of the past, so that it would crawl back to its shallow grave, be buried, and _stay _buried.

"Lel!"

Leliana emerged from her reverie to see Nyx hurry to her; she could not help smiling at the wary glance the elf cast Louis as she caught up with them. Marteau hurried along, his expression somber.

"Trouble, boss," the dwarf said laconically, glancing at the elf and the human bard briefly.

"You can speak freely, Marteau," Louis said with a little half-smile in Leliana's direction, "we have nothing to hide from our allies here."

Marteau nodded curtly and handed him a tiny scroll of paper. Louis took a quick look at the encrypted message and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"Bigleux caught an Inquisition bird this morning," he explained, "tough cipher on this one, took the magi a while to crack. Ye're gonna fall on yer ass…"

"You're going to tell me, or you're gonna make me blow you for it?" Louis growled.

"Nah, I don't like fat humans… I'll pass on the ritual salutations etc., the core of the message says: _Divine Marguerite assassinated on Empress Celene's order. Grand Inquisitor Diane Pelletier taking full powers pending Conclave. Exalted March to be declared against Orlais_."

Leliana and Louis opened their mouths in perfect unison, found nothing to say and just stared at the dwarf. In the dead silence that ensued, Alistair's voice could be heard echoing over the canal's peaceful murmur.

"Ouch, Toast, we said _no groin shots_! Else how am I supposed to spar with a dwarf? Hey, is it me or is something _burning_?"

The wind did carry a hint of smoke, Leliana reflected. And it was surprisingly dark for an early afternoon. Raising her head, she saw the great, billowing cloud covering the sky.

"Maker…"

Far and high above the Imperial city, the Great Cathedral's golden dome shone like an angry sun amidst the flames and smoke. As the conspirators watched, an explosion shook the edifice; the colossal dome shuddered, hesitated for a second, then collapsed with a thundering groan.

Leliana felt a small hand slip into hers; Nyx's face was a blur when she looked at her, and she realized that she was crying. Something strange passed in the elf's silver gaze.

"It was beautiful," the elf said softly.

* * *

Down in the Crassieres, the crowd moans in consternation as the Great Cathedral falls, its collapse showering the Golden Quarter in embers that threaten to set the whole neighborhood ablaze. The city echoes with the frantic din of alarm bells, and everywhere, confused citizens assemble before the Chantries.

Just like hundreds of other inquisitors in the capital, Patrice throws his arms to the sky with a long, mournful cry. All eyes converge on him; the priest is a beacon of stability amidst the madness that has just irrupted in the crowd's lives. All turn to him for comfort and, more importantly, to give a reason to the chaos.

"At last, at last hey have done it! O brothers and sisters, the heathens, the enemies of the true Faith, have struck at the very heart of our Chantry! O day of mourning! O day of wrath!"

The crowd roars in anger, still uncertain of the target's true identity, but nonetheless willing and able to take it apart. Patrice glares at the mob, his eyes promising an eternity of flames to the timid and the hesitant.

"O brothers and sisters, today we stand to protect the Truth! Today, we do away with the tyrants whose impiety cast us into an age of darkness!"

The crowd is ready for bloodshed now, and Patrice points at the target at last.

"To the palace, brothers and sisters! Down with the tyrant!"

* * *

Divine Marguerite's private chapel was sparsely decorated, a vestige of a time when the Chantry's influence was just starting to spread. In fact, the Divine's palace had been built _around_ this modest, sturdy chapel. Like all places of power, however, the chapel held was not without its secrets.

Just like every evening, Marguerite prayed before the simple stone statue of Andraste. As usual, the Divine was attended by a small congregation of a half-dozen nuns. It was a little difficult to pray these days; Marguerite couldn't quite put her mind off the idea of tasty pudding. She supposed she was guilty of greed, but pudding with grated coconut reminded her of her childhood, and these days Marguerite thought of her childhood a lot. She never expressed it publicly, but she was quite tired of being the Divine, and quite tired of being burdened with so many responsibilities, and frankly, quite tired of life itself. Why the Maker took pleasure in keeping her alive and ailing was quite unfathomable.

Just a few more ritual sentences, a few minutes and she could move on to her apartments and wait for Diane. The child was a good priest, a good woman and would make a worthy successor, if the Maker willed so. And of course with Diane's daily visit came coconut pudding.

_Mother used to have biscuit made with coconut from Rivain. Marguerite used to steal biscuits form the kitchen, the elven servants always closed their eyes on the young mistress's little faults, and Marguerite would hide in the cool chapel to share the sweet-scented biscuits with her brother._

Marguerite didn't hear the grating of stone on stone that signaled the opening of the secret passage behind the altar; she was distracted by thoughts of coconut. Then the cloaked silhouette was on her, and she wanted to snap at this impertinent person for bumping into her, but her chest hurt and something inside was pumping and emptying and there was a lot of blood.

The Divine's last thoughts were for Diane and her coconut pudding.


	25. Chapter 25: Nightson

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Nightson**

* * *

_Sorry for the uber-delay with the updates, life has been hectic, if wonderful. And going back to writing after a long inactivity feels horrible!_

**

* * *

**

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. No, Anora reflected as she peered into the Grand Cleric's somber gaze, it was the opportunity of a millennium. This was a chance for Ferelden to get even, once and for all, with its bullying Northern neighbor, to overthrow a dynasty that had brought nothing but misery to its people and, presumably, to gain a strong foothold in the rich farmland beyond the Frostback mountains. The Exalted March against Orlais was a chance for Anora to unite a nobility still weary of her blood and to plant the seeds of the changes she had been dreaming of.

It was also coming at the worst possible time for Ferelden. With its armies in shambles, its capital all but destroyed and the countryside ravaged by the darkspawn hordes, it would take years, perhaps decades for the rural kingdom to fully recover. The grain reserves were insufficient, the shadow of famine loomed very close, and the plague was threatening to take on truly disastrous proportions, with more and more citizens dying in their sleep or turning mad, only to be put to the sword by Templars or family.

Loghain shifted on his unadorned wooden chair. Anora didn't need to look at him to know that his face would reflect little of what he felt. She could feel the tension radiating from the old warrior's body all the same; in this instant her father was like a mabari hound smelling blood, his keen intelligence holding his aggression in check – just barely.

"The Crown will answer the Holy Chantry's call, Your Holiness," Anora said in a cool voice that belied the violent thrumming of blood through her chest, "although the might of Ferelden is hardly what it used to be."

"Maker knows our country has been through enough, Your Majesty," the old priest answered with genuine emotion, "but it is the very foundation of the true faith that is at stake. Any Andrastian strong enough to pick up a sword should do so with a wrathful heart."

"And wrathful we shall be… But our people must eat, too, and it will do no good to leave what little wheat we have to rot in our fields while the men go to battle," Anora said firmly, "the extent of Ferelden's war effort cannot be discussed this early, Your Holiness, but I will convey a Landsmeet as soon as humanly possible. Now if you will excuse us…"

The Grand Cleric saluted curtly and left the room, striding with the cold, stiff countenance of a long-frozen corpse re-animated by some mischievous demon. Not that this would have dampened Loghain's excitement. The massive double doors had hardly swallowed the Grand Cleric's gnarly frame that the old warrior was on his feet, pacing up and down excitedly and making detailed plans for the oncoming annihilation of Orlais. Anora waited for a few minutes for her father to calm down a little before raising a thin, white hand.

"Something's amiss," Anora stated calmly, consciously willing her voice to be a cold shower dousing her father's boiling temper. Loghain frowned, but paused to listen.

"It makes absolutely no sense for Celene to start a war with the Chantry. This is just suicidal, there is nothing to gain."

"Orlesian royalty is as inbred as they come," Loghain interjected, "one of Celene's uncles has thirteen fingers and has been known to consort with _pumpkins_, and that's on the healthy side of the family…"

"Do you really believe this, father, or is it just your thirst for Orlesian blood speaking?"

"Speaking of experience, people make stupid mistakes," Loghain countered bitterly. "Celene is not above that. Still…"

"Still, this comes months _after_, not before, Templars all over Thedas have been mobilizing and moving into major cities," Anora completed, "in hindsight, that was terribly fortuitous of them, wasn't it?"

Loghain sighed. Much as he missed honest, open war, the world these days was simply not black and white any more.

* * *

The conspirators stood on the roof of Louis's mansion, watching the fires of civil war spread through Val Royeaux. The guards and volunteers trying to stop the spread of the Great Cathedral's blaze to the affluent neighborhood had been assaulted by angry mobs; now the flames were running amok through popular quarters, and the mob was none the wiser. In fact, as Louis remarked ironically, agitators among the crowd would be sure to pin the responsibility on Imperial authorities.

Huddled against her bard, Nyx briefly wondered what it must feel like to see one's hometown sink into war and chaos. Come to think of it, Nyx had really no place she could call home. She hugged Leliana with more urgency, seeking comfort in the bard's warmth.

"They're going to attack the palace," Papillon said, pointing at the sprawling, walled complex by the riverside. Swarms of minuscule silhouettes were converging on the palace from all directions. Nyx thought of the darkspawn hordes in Denerim and felt Leliana shudder against her.

"Aye. And they're going to get slaughtered," Louis replied in a bitter voice, "Celene has doubled the number of troops within the city just in case the Templars tried something fancy, and on my advice, no less. Lady Nyx, you wouldn't happen to know any, huh, crowd control spells?"

"Trust me, you do not want to see the sort of _crowd control_ the Warden is capable of," Zevran said softly, "it is not, how do say in Orlesian, _joli_, not pretty…"

Looking up from her moody reflections, Nyx nodded.

"I don't specialize in influence spells," she confirmed wryly; "besides, no mage is powerful enough to stop such a crowd. If it was possible, mages would rule Thedas." _Not that Thedas would be the worse for it_, she added mentally. The madness that unfurled before her was proof enough of that.

The conspirators watched with a mixture of fascination and repulsion as the crowd massed around the Palace gates. The ill-coordinated assault was met with a deluge of arrows, and the mob shrunk away from the walls for a few moments, leaving the pavement littered with corpses. Nyx felt Leliana tense as she caught sight of a glimmer of steel at the far end of the Palace Square.

"Here they come," Louis murmured, "Maker take pity on the buggers."

Like a wave of glistening metal, the Chevaliers moved into Palace Square, their approach made more terrible by the sudden silence that gripped the crowd. Nyx's elven eyes could vaguely make out the shapes of armored men on huge horses, but the main impression was that a wall of polished steel was slowly rolling across the square. The wall paused a few hundred yards from the crowd, and Nyx imagined that she heard the summons from the heralds, their half-hearted promises of clemency in exchange for submission. She could almost feel the excitement of the warhorses, the tension building in the great beasts before the charge. Stones were thrown, and she saw one of the heralds fall from his horse. She imagined the small silhouettes of the agitators within the crowd, shouting slogans to rouse the rioters' courage. She felt the tipping point being reached, and the chevaliers charged.

The steel wall of the horsemen started moving forward, slowly at first, then faster, gathering momentum and terrible strength until the long spears found flesh and the great horses' hooves crushed through living, screaming bodies. Then the slaughter started in earnest. The armored knights moved through the mob like Death's very scythe, reaping a harvest of blood and souls.

_So much blood. So many souls._

Nyx figured that the essence of mortals was all over Val Royeaux; its scent filled her nostrils and she realized that she could see the massacre in her mind's eye, like a red flower blooming on the face of the Veil. The flower swelled and spread its fantastic petals over the city, coloring it crimson. Beyond its stain, she knew, were hungry things, things that had been banished from this world a long time ago because of the same hunger she felt tearing at her soul.

The blood of the living seeped into the earth, the souls of the dead rushed into the Beyond, and the Veil ebbed away. Nyx's breath accelerated as something in her demanded the power that raged before her mind-eye. The hundreds of lives being taken were not enough, not nearly enough to tear open the barriers and free herself from the dark forest, but she knew how to get more. They were all over the place, the city was filled with them: small, pulsating blood stars hiding in the precarious refuge of their homes. There were other cities, too…

Hands were over her: soothing, loving hands, and a soul that sought to comfort and _ensnare_, bringing back hated memories of self, of loving embraces, of pain and pleasure and weakness. It was another body, another soul, but the one that restrained her thus was well known to the dark presence, and He hissed her name.

_She was the splinter of hope perpetually wedged in the perfection of His darkness; some day, He would consume her for good, and find solace in an eternity of solitude. But not now… To lash out would only strengthen His fetters; better let her light ebb and wane…_

The dark presence relented, and Nyx awoke with a start in Leliana's arms. Blue eyes zeroed in on her with a look of deep alarm.

"What… what did you call me?" the bard blurted out in shock. Nyx wanted to tell her that she didn't know, that she had forgotten the dark dream and the promise of power, but the Dread God's voice still lingered in her mind, smooth and venomous.

"Not here," Nyx murmured with a look in Louis and the gangsters' direction.

Leliana nodded and motioned for Nyx to follow her downstairs. Once they got to the room their shared on the third floor, Leliana closed the door carefully and stood by the window, purposefully staring at the ill-kempt courtyard below.

"What happened right now?" she asked in a tone that sounded more accusatory than she may have wanted it to.

Nyx bit her lower lip. She hardly wished to remember her brush with divinity; in terms of pleasantness, the encounter ranked only slightly above being sawed in half with a rusty teaspoon.

"The massacre… the blood drew Him to me, and He tried to… I think He tried to break through the Veil. Look, what matters is that He went away…"

"You pronounced a name. _Andruil_," Leliana cut in, "Do you know what that means?"

Nyx shook her head, grimacing. Vague images raced through her mind, the fugitive impression of a spark of irritation shining through peaceful darkness…

"Not really, no. Fen'Harel and the elven gods are supposed to be mortal enemies, and He wasn't exactly pleased with your intervention. Your presence… holds Him at bay, for now."

"Is there anything, anything that suggests a link between that Elven goddess and you… or…" Leliana's voice trailed a little, and Nyx could see the effort she made to regain control of her emotions. Leliana's hands were clenched on the windowsill, the knuckles white with the pressure. "…Or me," the bard finished in a voice that lacked her usual resonance, and Nyx felt a lump form in her throat. Leliana looked terrified and exhausted, and worry traced thin, spiderweb-like lines on her face.

"I don't believe so," she said softly, treading over to the shivering human. The bard's hand was very cold. "Do you?"

"I… we haven't had time to talk about it, but I have had dreams…"

Nyx listened intently as Leliana told her tale: she spoke of the crying abomination in the Chantry, of her dreams of elven gods and of her growing certainty that they were visions from a different age of the world. She spoke for a long time, and when the bard's voice trailed off, they remained silent in the darkening bedroom.

"I don't get it," Nyx finally whispered, "Why do _you_ have anything to do with and Elven goddess?"

"Well, what about you? Why did Fen'Harel choose you?"

Nyx waved a hand dismissively.

"He chooses his vessels among His priests' bloodline. Or more accurately, He breeds cultists for this very purpose. I, huh, met one of them. He was very much like me."

"What happened to him? Do you think he could help us?"

"I doubt that. He's dead." Leliana raised her eyebrows, and Nyx reluctantly told her of her encounter with the zealot in the Brecilian outskirts.

"There may be others like him," Leliana remarked when the elven sorceress had finished her tale, "we may be able to get information from them."

"Yeah. Or maybe they will sacrifice us to Fen'Harel, just because, hey, that's what they do."

"Do you think that's what Fen'Harel wants? To kill us?"

Nyx shook her head in frustration. "I don't know. Look, one moment He tries to kill you, first in the Brecilian Forest, then in Fort Drakon; next, He seems to try very hard _not_ to. He made me kill dozens of Templars in the Redoute, but whenever you confront Him He scampers away like a wet poodle. This makes no sense at all. And this talk of Betrothed…"

Nyx tensed, and Leliana vaguely felt the ripples in the Veil as the sorceress battled her anger. Leliana gently ran her hand through the raven hair, and after a while, the elf relaxed a little.

"Screw Fen'Harel," the sorceress hissed softly, "He has no right to do that to us."

"No," Leliana whispered in the creeping gloom, "no he doesn't."

They sat for a while amid the creeping night. What little light came through the window was tinged red by the fires that still raged through Val Royeaux. To Nyx's eyes, Leliana's face seemed a crimson mask suspended in the dark, filled with the inner light of their combined blood. The vision reminded her of the ritual on Fort Drakon's rooftop, of Leliana's dead weight in her arms, and she shuddered as images floated to the surface of her mind, dead images carrying the faint echo of the Wolf God's mirth.

_Bonds of blood…_

_Go fuck yourself_, Nyx answered mentally. _She's mine._ _I will find you, wherever you are, and I will end you._

Nyx's lips brushed against the bard's ear, and she spoke a word of command.

"Sleep," she said as she unleashed a spell.

* * *

They stand a the threshold of a deep, dark place, a cave so vast the towers of Arlathan could comfortably fit under its arched vault and still look like children's toys.

Caves hold little appeal for the Goddess of the Hunt; her domain lies with the lush jungles and the limitless steppes. However, the cave's single _occupant_ has Andruil hold her breath, lost in awe. The thing's unimaginable bulk fills the titanic cavern, extending for untold miles through the dark recesses of the earth, and Andruil suddenly realizes that the thick layers of rock must have formed _around_ the Being in the course of untold eons.

The Being defies classification; it is inexplicably alien, both organic and inorganic, a thing of flesh and living, simmering metal. Its vast form lies inert, yet Andruil feels the pulse of life as surely as she could pinpoint the sun's location with her eyes closed. Monumental scales of steel gleam coldly in Andruil's light, and she vaguely makes out the shape of a tower-like claw in the distance. Fascinated, she grows to a more appropriate size and flies towards the ceiling, her Lord behind her. Andruil knows that the Wolf Lord sees perfectly through the darkness, but light is in her nature, and under the radiance of her wings, the Being is revealed.

"_An Old Wyrm_?"

Before they retreated into slumber, the Old Wyrms were the only life forms in Thedas that came remotely close to rivaling the Gods of Arlathan's might. But Andruil has hardly spoken that she realizes her mistake. The Old Dragons were strong, and possessed of a certain savage beauty, but this… this is _perfection_, all smooth steel and powerful muscles. The Old Wyrms, she realizes, are but _echoes_ of this cosmic dragon: distorted, weakened reflections of a greater principle.

By her side, the Wolf Lord nods, as though he was perfectly aware of her thoughts. And maybe he is; after all, no other god has yet ascertained the full extent of his abilities.

"Not echoes," he says, confirming her suspicions, "_Copies_. The Ancestors sought to understand it, so they tried to replicate it, with little success. Their magic failed them in this, just like it failed them in many things."

"But what _is_ it?"

"I thought that was evident, my Lady. The Ancestors called it Erm'Gandar, the Wyrm of the World. You are looking at the First One of the old tales. Only _this_ is real, and maybe not quite as… benevolent as the legends tell."

"The First One? Do you mean that a… dragon sired the gods?" Andruil asks incredulously. This Being may be beyond titanic, and the Essence she feels coursing through it may be terrifyingly powerful, but this is obviously a thing of matter, time and energy, not some abstract principle of fatherhood. The Wolf God smirks.

"I doubt it _sired_ anything save for a deep crater when it fell here. But I do think it is responsible for the current shape of Thedas's life; a guiding principle, albeit not a conscious one. It _dreams_, you see. It has been dreaming for so long that its dreams have shaped history. In fact, the Ancestors believed that the Beyond was but a byproduct of its sleep; something like a protective cocoon woven around its mind."

Andruil nods. Facts and the legends of her culture are starting to come together slowly, and she is not sure she likes the pattern that is emerging.

"It didn't sire The Ancestors. They found it," she murmurs.

"Yes," the Wolf Lord growls somberly, "they found it, and then they did the same thing they did to every single life form they encountered: they tried to _harness_ it. What ensued were the fall of Thedas's greatest race, and the birth of both the Gods and the Trespassers."

The Wolf Lord points to a distant point by the steel cliff that is the Wyrm of the World's breast, and Andruil sees that there is a structure standing there, a circle of raised black stones, irregular in shape and strangely forbidding in spite of their seeming so small next to the Wyrm. As she flies closer to the structure, Andruil notices that the stones scatter her light, but that their shapes remain vague, as though their surface were wrapped in perpetual darkness.

"Star stones," Andruil whispers, tentatively extending a hand to touch the shadowy material. Its surface feels very cold, as though it tried to suck the heat from her, and she snarls unconsciously, ready to smash through the stone at any sign of danger.

"Careful, my Lady," the Wolf Lord warns, "These things are quite hard. It took all of the Ancestors' craft to break off a single chip" He points to a big, irregularly-shaped boulder in the center of the circle; a small, wicked-looking shard of black stone lies on it, strangely virgin of dust.

"A means to an end," the Wolf God growls softly as he picks up the stone shard. His yellow eyes glow in his dark features. "And now, I must tell you a tale…"

* * *

_In the beginning were the Ancestors. Whence they came from, I truly cannot tell, although some of their writings suggest that they came through holes in the sky. But their legends point to a mythical past when they could neither speak nor dream, but wandered on the winds of magic and rampaged like hungry beasts._

_When the Ancestors came to Thedas, they found a world bustling with life of which they made their prey, and here they settled and devoured. And over the course of eons, Thedas changed them: for in their rest they now had dreams, and they mingled with the shadowy entities that roam the Beyond. In the waking world, the Ancestors found diminutive creatures that could not change their shapes. These were the forebears of the elves and Stone Dwellers, and these lesser creatures the Ancestors domesticated. They used the Children of the Stone as laborers, but in the elves they found more malleable slaves, teaching them the ways of magic in exchange for immortal life-blood and the power to name things. _

_In time, a great civilization rose, the likes of which Thedas will never see again. Freed from the necessities of the hunt by their elven slaves, the Ancestors spent much of their time perfecting their understanding of the universe and devising new, terrible magics. Whenever they got bored, they waged wars, clans and nations mobilizing vast slave armies and immense energies. Elven blood drenched the earth, cities lay shattered; the Ancestors feasted in the ruins, then built anew. _

_It was a hunter's paradise. But it was to end. _

_While the Ancestors' blood thirst was easily satiated, their hunger for knowledge was not. They sought to rob the universe from all its secrets, and for what I know, they nearly succeeded. But there was one mystery in Thedas that foiled all their attempts. For in spite of their being able to dream-walk the Beyond, the Ancestors had no understanding of its nature, and like the gods of today, they were ultimately unable to bend it to their will. It eluded their control, just like the souls of the elves that passed away from wound or lassitude did. _

_In time, the Ancestors became obsessed with the Beyond, believing that it was the key to true understanding. They devised ways to send their bodies through the Veil, and failed miserably, sometimes even dying in the attempt. And always they searched for the origin, the elusive pivot that anchored the dream world to reality, and this, after millennia of patient research by the brightest minds of their civilization, was only achieved when a Dwarven crew stumbled upon something while burrowing deeper than usual. _

_The discovery of the Wyrm in the World must have shaken the very roots of the Ancestors' civilization. Here, under their very feet, lay a Being whose beauty and power ridiculed their own, and it had been there all along, dreaming the many alternate layers of reality that form the Beyond's substrate. _

_The Ancestors spent years wondering at the beast's size and beauty, and centuries debating what to do with it. A few among the Ancestors wished to try and contact the Wyrm's mind. Some wanted to try and kill it outright, arguing that the beast's very size made it a threat. In the end, of course, they did what any born hunter would do: they devised a way to steal the beast's life-blood. _

_Among the Ancestors was a chieftain called Sun-Born, who was known for his quick wits and audacity. It was he who suggested the use of star-stones to fashion a blade strong enough to puncture the Wyrm's scales. It was Sun-Born, wreathed in the magic of a thousand kinsfolk, who drove the star dagger into the sleeping Being's flank. The titanic Wyrm shuddered as incandescent blood spilled onto the ground, to be collected by Sun-Born's attendants. _

_As Sun-Born pulled the blade from the wound, he was unable to contain his greed, and raising the smoking blade, he let a single a drop of molten metal fall onto his lips. His attendants watched as he fell with a strangled roar, and was taken in great pain to his abodes. Sun-Born remained prostrate and delirious for weeks as the poison devoured his body. When he awoke, reborn as a thing of living metal and magic, the Ancestors greeted him as the herald of a new era. _

_The first of the gods was born. _

_There are no words in the tongue of the gods or elves to describe the jubilation that gripped the Ancestors. Whereas they had been almost god-like in power and resilience, they could now feast on the very essence of the world and overcome the limitations of flesh. The Wyrm's crypt resounded with cries of pain and elation as crowds gathered to receive the divine blood, and the cities above ground filled with the twitching, sweating bodies of those who underwent the transfiguration. The Wyrm's blood trickled for weeks, and thousand upon thousand drank from the wound. _

_Sun-born, now the Sun-God, watched uneasily as the first of his newborn brethren emerged from their agitated torpor. He cared little for the arrogance bestowed upon them by their newfound power, and he cared even less for the somber dreams that visited him at night. Divinity had brought with it a strange gift of vague, irrational fear._

_So when the news came that the Wyrm's wound was healing and that the trickle of divine blood had stopped, the Sun-God was the only one among the assembled Ancestors, reborn or not, to speak against re-opening the wound. Those who had not been changed shook their heads, muttering about selfishness, and the newborn gods openly mocked his timidity. But the Sun-God simply nodded and left the assembly, heading for his clan's mountainside fortress, and within its walls of steel he hid with his mate and brood. _

_Laughing and singing, the Ancestors descended into the Great Wyrm's silent tomb, but when they reached the great beast's side, even the most brazen among the new gods were taken aback and fell silent. For the wound in the dragon's flank was swollen, and a stench rose from it, as of carrion left after the feeding. Deep within the hunters' ever-changing forms, nigh-forgotten instincts stirred, reminding them of the need for fresh kill and the dangers of infected meat. The throng of the unchanged wavered, ready to give up on their quarry, but the new gods' pride would have none of it. _

_Who knows whose hand grasped the black dagger and plunged it into the festering wound? Their name is long forgotten, as are their pride and power. For just like an animal's body fights infection, so did the Great Wyrm's. What oozed out of that wound, squirming and screeching, was a terror the likes of which Thedas had never seen, a mindless force possessed with one goal: to seek and destroy the irritant, and to recover the Wyrm's divine essence._

_The Trespassers' onslaught took the Ancestors by surprise; the amorphous metallic entities slaughtered thousands on the spot, and even more died in the chaos that ensued, lashing out with fang, magic and claw and felling friend and kin. _

_After some time, though, the Ancestors regrouped, and the Great War began in earnest. But it was a war that could not be won. For even though the Ancestors and the newborn gods wielded considerable forces, splitting the earth and breaking the mountains in their anger, the Trespassers could not be obliterated. When weakened, the mindless executioners simply vanished, retreating into the Beyond to replenish their substance with the substance of dreams, only to blink back into existence and resume their murderous task._

_The Ancestors fought, and they were slaughtered. Over the course of a few centuries, their civilization was all but obliterated, and the survivors were reduced to furtive shadows, hiding in the ruins of the crumbling cities or in the thick jungles that grew out of the ashes. But hidden deep in his mountain keep, the Sun God watched and planned. With the help of his children, who shared their father's gift, he built great devices which he placed in the sky: the Fires of Arlathan. _

_When the time was ripe, the Sun God unleashed the Fires upon Thedas. In the roar of the Fires, the Trespassers blinked in and out of existence, resurrecting countless times only to be incinerated again. The purge was long, and terrible; the Fires scorched the world beyond recognition, killing beasts, mortals and Ancestors indiscriminately. But it worked. The Trespassers' incursions into reality grew less and less frequent, until they were nothing more than a shadow, a distant fear that haunted the dreams of the Sun God's children._

_

* * *

_

"Until now," Andruil whispers in the silence of the titanic crypt. The Wolf God nods gravely.

"Until now. The Fires are lost to us, and the Trespassers may now rampage freely among the living. But we are not _quite_ powerless against them. After the War, Father - the Sun God- started working on a weapon that he hoped could terminate the Trespassers' threat once and for all. He was almost done when Elgar'Nan betrayed him. But the weapon is here, waiting to be perfected."

Andruil scans the dark recesses of the crypt; besides the raised stones and some strange, broken apparatus, she sees only the dust of ages and the dessicated remains of the Ancestors.

"The dagger?" she asks doubtfully, studying the stone blade through her mind-eye. The dagger can be used to channel great energies, she senses, but it is, ultimately, just a very hard piece of rock. The Wolf God shakes his massive head and growls softly.

"The Trespassers cannot be killed by stone or steel, Lady of the Hunt. The Sun God came to the conclusion that one has to fight fire with fire, so to speak. The only way to eliminate the Trespassers was to seek them out in the Beyond, catch them and contain them. Come, I must show you something."

Soaring through the air, the Great Wolf leads Andruil through the dark mouth of a tunnel on the far side of the Wyrm's cave. Instants later, they emerge into a modest-sized vault, crammed to the brim with dusty, derelict-looking devices. The smell and music of magic is everywhere, emanating from the many devices and from a tall, shimmering column in the center of the room. Andruil approaches the pillar of light, fascinated by the strange colors that float on the surface.

Something moves inside the column, and the Goddess of the Hunt leaps back, wings of magic crackling menacingly; fangs bared, Andruil raises a spear of light and prepares to fight for her life.

"It is contained," The Wolf Lord whispers with a hint of amusement. He walks to the pillar and caresses the shimmering surface; inside the column, hundreds of metallic claws flail in frenzy, to no avail.

Her weapon still held at the ready, Andruil steps forward to look at the thing. Its shape is ill-defined, perpetually shifting and transforming, so that all that registers in her mind is a mass of claws, fangs and ever-erupting rage. A weak, mental shriek pierces through the wards, and the goddess is overwhelmed by loathing.

"We must kill it," she growls without thinking.

"It cannot be killed. But it may be… neutralized."

"This… Trespasser…" she spits the word as though it was venom, "_this _is the weapon you told me about?"

"No," the Wolf God answers calmly, "only part of it. The weapon stands before you."

Andruil lets her guard down as she stares at her lover; the Wolf God's shoulders are a little slumped, as though the weight of millennia had finally caught up with him.

"But you are a god, my Lord," she says softly. He smiles at her, and she can plainly sense the fear behind the smile.

"There are no gods, my Lady. Divinity is just one of Elgar'Nan's lies. The gods are but mortals who cheated fate, and I am Nightson, born from the combined essence of gods and Trespassers."

With catlike fluidity, Andruil moves to take her lover's rough hand, and the yellow eyes widen in interrogation.

"You are my Lord and king. This is all I know. When you fight the Trespassers, Andruil will be at your side."

Nodding, the Wolf Lord turns to face the writhing creature in the pillar.

"So be it," he growls softly.

Behind the iridescent surface of its prison, the Trespasser shrieks in challenge.


	26. Chapter 26: A pact with the dead

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**A pact with the dead**

**

* * *

**

The woods were very quiet.

Silence should not have been much of an issue. The wilderness around Arlesans were not exactly renowned for being crowded; the hills were too steep for horseback hunting, and the town itself was anything but a major population center, being too far from the Imperial Highway. The only thing that stood out about Arlesans was its fine wool, the bountiful gift from the goats that roamed freely over the steep slopes of the valleys. Even so, the town only attracted traders in the springtime, when the barns around the valley filled with rich, pungent wool ready to be gathered in great balls and carted off to the imperial cities. In the beginning of the winter, though, you would have been hard pressed to find enough outsiders in the town to play a hand of Hanging Hurlock.

So it wasn't the absence of man-made noise that bothered the hunter as he stealthily made his way along a brush-covered ridge. Rather, it was the surprising scarcity of the forest's usual guests: birds enjoying the early winter sun, rodents scampering with a hushed noise among dry leaves, and the occasional call of a hunting wild cat.

The hunter knew the forest like the back of his hand because, well, roaming the woods was what he did for a living. He wasn't after deer or wild boars: that may have resulted in a rather unpleasant meeting with the local lordlings' helpers. Instead, the hunter made ends meet by catching fowl and small game which he sold on market days, and occasionally claiming a reward for the capture of undesirable species such as wolves, bears and the odd giant spider.

So when news came that Old Segolene had lost three goats to a wolf, the hunter had gladly donned his quiver and bow and headed after the beast, following the cold trails into the deep recesses of the hills. It was mostly a guessing game, the hunter mused as he closed in on the beast's lair, a small cave at the bottom of a sheer cliff overlooking the woods. Aside from the odd pile of droppings, the animal did not leave many traces. But its behavior could be predicted, just like any hunter worth his salt could tell you that the little cave, with the thick brush hiding its mouth from preying eyes, was a very decent choice for a lair.

Unsurprisingly enough, the hunter found the wolf very close to its den.

Surprisingly enough, the wolf was _dead_. In fact there wasn't much left of it, besides a few tattered skin fragments strewn on the bloodied forest soil. The hunter tensed as he examined the remains. This didn't look like a bear's work, but a giant spider would have left a mess of webs…

Then he heard them: high-pitched, tenuous voices rising from the wolf's den. They were not exactly singing, but there was a strange harmony to the voices nonetheless, a cold melody that bypassed the intellect and talked to the blood. The hunter's hair stood on ends, but the melody soothed his fear, and he dreamily took one step forward, then two, and then he stumbled into the cave and remained petrified, unable to make sense of what he saw.

At first, the hunter thought that those were children in the cave, naked children with pale skin and long, gangly limbs, playing among the mangled remains of a wolf and several goats. Then the cave's denizens turned their gaze upon him; the hunter saw the strangely shaped snouts and stumbled backwards when the younglings bared fangs of silver. The hunter's back hit a wall where no wall should be, and the smell of burning metal enveloped him.

_The Devoured snapped the man's neck between its metal claws and dumped the twitching meat before its brood, fast-growing and always hungry. Somewhere, in a place that the Devoured didn't understand, the Master was calling, demanding that His vanguard sing and breed and prepare His Coming. Whining happily, the Devoured bared its fangs in what may have been a smile, once…_

_

* * *

_

_"Useless piece of crap!"_

With a shriek of rage, Nyx threw the water-stained book across Louis's elegant library. The offending tome landed on the thick carpet with hardly a sound, and the sorceress repressed the urge to incinerate it. _Two weeks!_ Nyx had studied the Light-Bearers' damned credo for two weeks, patiently breaking the cipher and working through the archaic Tevinter language, only to find herself bored beyond belief by insipid pseudo-mystical crap, the kind of which could be bought for a dime a dozen at any flea market in the capital.

Oh, she had certainly learned a few things about the Light Bearers' credo. There were tons of allusions to the Devourer and the Wolf Born, generally considered the heralds of the Maker's coming. There were some veiled references to a "great weapon of the gods", too, and Nyx suspected that the Light Bearers might have been after some ancient device that would grant them great power. Add to this the fact that they explicitly defined anyone outside their cult as a sinner and heretic, and you had a really charming bunch of loonies, hell-bent on raining fire and brimstone upon Thedas.

But that was all. There were no descriptions of the Light Bearers's plans, or hints as to why the Wolf Born played such a central role in their concerns. Or the Betrothed, for that matter…

Nyx's research into the Wolf Cult had been just as unfruitful, in spite of Louis's using his considerable influence to give her access to the best libraries and scholars in the Orlesian capital. There _were_ a few passing references to a strange elven cult being spotted in the forests of Tevinter, but Nyx did not feel inclined to traveling hundreds of miles based on the accounts of explorers who swore they had encountered unicorns and talking mushrooms…

As for Leliana's visions, they came and went, but most of the time they seemed devoid of any significance, mere flashes of what the lives of the legendary elven gods may or may not have been. The bard had been a little shocked at learning about Nyx's peering into her dreams, although she had done her best to hide her displeasure under the appearance of humor, joking that Nyx had enthralled her for the night. The words had an edge to them, though, and by and large Nyx now stayed out of Leliana's head.

Nyx sighed as she picked up the book for the umpteenth time. This was getting nowhere. She could ill afford inaction, not with Fen'Harel stirring in the Fade and the world around her going to hell. The riots in Val Royeaux had subsided for the moment, but there was talk of barons rebelling and foreign armies massing to the borders. Soon, Val Royeaux would become a very dangerous place, and Nyx wasn't naive enough to believe that her enemies had forgotten her. And if that wasn't reason enough to worry…

Nyx absently scratched her left arm. She was quite used to the pain that radiated from her dead hand every single time she touched something; the pain had become an old friend, its return a welcome signal that her Tranquil days were well over. Mastering the pain gave her a strange feeling of accomplishment, and Nyx insisted on using the wizened hand in all normal tasks of life, the major exception being that she tried not to touch Leliana with it.

For the tenth time this day, Nyx removed her long silk glove and pulled her sleeve up, then stared somberly at the exposed flesh.

It was spreading.

The swirling, serpentine arabesques, seemingly made of the same metallic substance that was the hallmark of Fen'Harel's thralls, had begun as faint traces embedded in her left hand's wizened skin and bones. But after Nyx's liberation from the Light Bearers' dungeon, the metallic arabesques had started to creep up. Now the dead hand looked as though it were traversed by shifting streams of mercury, and the patterns were gaining ground into the healthy flesh of her forearm, up to the elbow. Even though Leliana's presence somewhat shielded her from possession by Fen'Harel, the god's substance was at work in her. Watching the metallic serpents twist lazily, Nyx thought of worms in dead flesh, and she hastened to cover her arm, swearing under her breath. Leliana had not noticed the changes yet, and the sorceress intended to keep things this way, at least for a while.

A clear voice drifted in from the window, singing a slow, sad Orlesian ballad, and Nyx felt a pinch of regret. She had hardly spent any time with Leliana in the previous weeks; the bard was left to run her own inquiries and kill time in Zevran's company, in a city that had all but lost its proverbial appetite for life. Even during the few respites Nyx allowed herself, she was absorbed in her thoughts, her mind racing to solve the dark god's riddles. All in vain, Nyx reflected sadly. Maybe it would be best if they just gave up and tried to enjoy what little time they had left.

_And then what?_ Sooner or later, the Dread Wolf would take over Nyx's body; or He would find another way out of the Grey Forest, and He would find them. There was no hiding from a god. Better fight, then. Better not wait for the executioner's blade to fall, not until Nyx had exhausted all other ways.

Sighing, Nyx slipped the Light Bearers' tome into her pouch, pushing aside various charms and trinkets accumulated during the trials of the past year. The delicately embroidered pouch was a gift from Leliana, and the bard had brought it with her from Denerim when she had set on her lover's trail. Nyx fiddled distractedly with the trinkets, pulling them out of the bag and setting them onto the desk before her: a Grey Warden's amulet, exotic coins, a blood-red gem, a leather bookmark…

Frowning slightly, Nyx picked up the bookmark, trying to remember its origin. The thing was beautifully crafted, if somewhat sinister, artfully cut in the image of a withered tree with spiny, curling limbs. The smell of it, however, was straight out disturbing to the elf's delicate nostrils: sweetish, with a hint of sweat and lyrium that betrayed its origins, as well as its likely owner.

_Flemeth_… Only the old nut would collect bookmarks lovingly crafted out of a Templar's skin. The thing must have slipped from one of the witch's grimoires before Nyx handed them over to Morrigan. Running her fingers on the disturbingly smooth leather, Nyx recalled her fateful encounters with the legendary Witch of the Wilds. It was a pity that Flemeth's knowledge was lost…

_Was it?_

Nyx remembered the spark of fear and excitement in Morrigan's yellow eyes when she had learned of her mother's bloody demise. What had the younger witch said?

"_Even so, I doubt that she is truly dead."_

Flemeth had been an abomination, an unholy hybrid of human and demon that cheated death by stealing the younger bodies of her daughters. Nyx had once caught a glimpse of her true nature: a hollow husk inhabited by a bloated, sprawling horror. Nyx had fled in terror that day, not only because of the threat, but also because of the odious kinship she had felt. In Flemeth, Nyx had found a vision of her future, gnawed and corrupted by the dark powers she had summoned. Could such beings die?

_Can __**I**__ die? If I stuck a dagger through my heart, would I really end, or would Fen'Harel bring me back? _

Leliana's voice rose higher in the afternoon air, and the sorceress shivered, trying to shake off her morbid mood. Suddenly Flemeth's insane monologues didn't seem nearly so outlandish. Nyx had best find a solution before her grasp on sanity slipped and she started talking in the third person.

_Flemeth, then. Let's see how death suits the old bat._

_

* * *

_

"Welcome, Your Holiness. I trust your passage into Nevarra was as pleasant as possible, given the circumstances?"

Diane stared coldly at the Grand Cleric of Nevarra, dark and thin and magnificent in her gold-embroidered robes, and after a few seconds of this treatment the older woman literally squirmed with unease.

"Sister, We have been on the run from the True Chantry's enemies ever since we fled Val Royeaux. Of course things could have been more _pleasant_. Have the faithful's armies gathered?"

"Almost, Your Holiness. The King and nobility are mustering as many men as they can without leaving the country open to a Tevinter invasion."

Diane grimaced, making her contempt for Nevarra's strategic concerns painfully obvious.

"Tell the King that his armies must be ready to attack Orlais within a fortnight. As for the Tevinters, our Templars will help keeping them in check. In fact, We want _all_ of your Nevarran Templars ready to escort me North within a week."

"Within a week, Your Holiness?" The Nevarran's bronzed features betrayed her incredulity. "We… Yes, Your Holiness. But, Your Holiness, the King will surely ask why the Holy Regent wishes to head into the Silent Plains…"

Diane scowled, and the Grand Cleric strived to retract her head into her robes' collar.

"_If_ the King must ask, then tell him this: The Divine's assassination heralds a great evil, and the Sword of Mercy is needed to quench it. Listen, the King's troops need simply hold Orlais at bay," Diane continued in a softer voice, "The Templars will take care of the more serious threat."

The Grand Cleric bowed respectfully, and a servant showed Diane to her quarters in the upper floor of Nevarra's clerical palace. Diane waited for the servant to exit and threw herself onto the bed, finally allowing herself to acknowledge the fatigue of the road.

Things had been hard since the Wolf Born had escaped her custody, Diane reflected, but all things considered, the Light Bearers were still in a relatively strong position. By the time the Wolf Born caught up with her, Diane and her allies would be safely entrenched by the Tomb. Sooner or later, the Wolf Born would come looking for answers, and the Light Bearers would be ready to welcome her.

Smiling, Diane sank into the dreamless sleep of the just and the foolish.

* * *

"Are you sure about that? What if He catches you in the Fade?"

Leliana stood before their shared bed, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. Nyx smiled at the display of nervousness; non-mages tended to be wary of anything connected with the Fade, and Leliana understandably hated seeing her leave on her own into that mysterious, much-reviled realm.

"My spirit walks the Fade every night," she reminded calmly, "and besides, that's why I need you at my side: so you can kick Fen'Harel out of my head if He shows His ugly snout. Preferably _not_ literally, mind you."

"Well, what about demons? I can't scare _those_ away, can I?"

Nyx sighed. They had been over the subject half a dozen times already. There were risks involved for sure, although she suspected that Flemeth posed a far greater threat than any demon she was likely to encounter.

"Demons only possess those who listen to them, remember? Besides, it would be a very dull demon that would try and snatch the Big Bad Wolf's chosen one. Just call in Alistair if I start sprouting horns or something." Nyx saw Leliana's frown, and instantly regretted the bad joke. "Look," she said gently, "I'll be all right. You've been in the Fade before. You know demons piss their pants when they see me coming."

Leliana nodded moodily, and the sorceress raised herself on her toes to plant a quick kiss on the bard's cheek. "See you in a minute," Nyx quipped with forced cheerfulness as she climbed onto the bed.

In stark contrast with the Harrowing's pompous decorum, with its big basin of lyrium set on a pedestal and constipated Templars, Nyx's version of the Fade ritual was quite plain. The sorceress just sat on the bed, holding a tiny cup of liquid metal in her dead hand, her back comfortably propped up on thick pillows. Heck, if she was to do this, Nyx would rather _not_ go and crack her skull on the floor.

The sorceress hesitated for a second, her hand hovering above the smooth surface of the lyrium.

_If_ she was not mistaken, the ritual would work all the same: touching the singing metal would allow her to consciously enter the Fade, and – hopefully- focusing on Flemeth's bookmark would provide an anchoring of sorts, a link with the deceased witch's soul – if it was indeed lingering in the Fade. Of course, Nyx's knowledge of the ritual was rather… theoretical, so there really was no telling what could happen.

Brushing aside all thoughts of failed rituals, Nyx carefully dipped the tip of her index into the liquid metal, grimacing at the cold she felt radiating through her hand and arm. The intense burn reminded her of what Irving had done in the Circle Tower, of the icy brand searing into her forehead, and suddenly she wasn't too sure that this was a good idea after all. Flailing wildly, Nyx tried to catch herself as she fell back onto the pillows; only the pillows were not there anymore and she fell through tenuous webs of time and distance, fighting drunkenly to regain her bearings in a liquid universe where sounds and colors mingled wildly.

When the spinning sensation and the nausea subsided, Nyx found herself lying face down on what appeared to be lukewarm, purple-colored mud – although, judging by the smell, it may as well have been rotting red cabbage . Jumping to her feet with a little yelp of disgust, Nyx examined her surroundings.

The Fade's landscape was as vague as ever, land and sky virtually indistinguishable in the eternal yellow mist that seemed to replace the air in these chaotic realms. Under Nyx's eyes, isles and mountains of translucent rock rose and dissolved in the distance as the Fade's capricious denizens fashioned their own realities. If anything, the Fade appeared even more agitated than the sorceress remembered; it seemed to her that spirits and demons were engaged in a frenzy of activity, creating and destroying their whimsical realms faster than the mortal mind could comprehend them. The sight was fascinating, and more than a little nauseating. Turning her eyes towards the ill-defined horizon, Nyx found the reason of the commotion.

Far in the distance – if _distance_ meant anything here- the Fade's demented architecture gave way to a wall of grey mist, dead still and vaguely menacing. As the sorceress watched, a commotion erupted in one of the islands of reality bordering the mist. Walls of corrugated iron sprouted from the ground, towers of jade sprang forth; the fantastic fortress cut through the nearby grey mass like a blade, and Nyx felt a massive pulse of magic as some powerful, unknown Fade entity roared in defiance.

The grey shadow didn't move or stir, and for an instant Nyx believed that the challenge had gone unnoticed. Then the devouring started.

It started with tiny dots forming on the newly erected walls, minute flecks of grey that slowly, inexorably blossomed into something bigger, sprouting sinuous roots and gnarled limbs as they grew, and as the dead trees grew they devoured the walls, the towers and the land. A shadow rose from the trees, and within moments the remnants of the fortress were lost under a dirty veil of grey. From the mist, the Fade entity's voice rose one last time in a quavering plea; there came the thunder of the great steel maw snapping shut, and the Fade was silent for an instant.

And then, as more dead trees sprouted, the Fade erupted into renewed frenzy, as spirits and demons tore each other apart in a desperate bid to get away from the encroaching mass of the Grey Forest.

"The old demons cry and sing sad songs, and the Wolf child comes to visit Flemeth… How do you like the music? One may have written the score, but the performance is always a surprise…"

Nyx spun on her heels, magic flaring, vaguely expecting a dragon's scaly paw to squish her like an insect. Instead, she found herself staring at a shapely, but plainly human form clad in simple white robes. Cold yellow eyes glistened mockingly at the elf's fright.

"Flemeth," Nyx murmured as she studied the apparition. For reasons that were her own, the shapeshifter appeared in the guise of a middle-aged woman, with black hair and full lips that reminded her of Morrigan. Nyx vaguely wondered if this shape may have been the witch's last body, before age wizened it... Or it might well have been Flemeth's original form, the first in a long line of unholy transformations.

Shape, however, was an illusion. Here in the Fade, Flemeth was free to assume whatever appearance she wanted. Even so, the witch was hardly able to hide the extent of her power; Nyx could feel the massive pull of magic, skulking just beneath the witch's illusory skin like a reptile beneath calm water. Should Flemeth want retribution for that unfortunate incident with the dragon, Nyx was not optimistic about the outcome.

Still, even Flemeth could not hope to hold Fen'Harel at bay, and that put Nyx in a reasonable bargaining position.

"So? Shall I act surprised that you should visit Flemeth's grave? Have you come to apologize for murdering the old lady, I wonder?" There was something uniquely unsettling about the way the immortal witch uttered the word "grave", and it probably had something to do with the look of amusement on her face.

"I don't know. Would you like an apology?"

"If you insist on answering questions with more questions, we will still be here when your pet god comes sniffing for us… which, incidentally, will happen sooner than you would think. I wonder, did you have any idea what you were doing when you sold Urthemiel's soul?"

"I did not…"

"Ah, so you did _not_ know. And they say that ignorance is a blessing… Pah!" The witch spat angrily. Something grayish writhed on the muddy floor. "I wonder," Flemeth continued in a softer tone, "why did you reject Morrigan's offer?"

Nyx frowned. She had only blurred memories of the days preceding the Archdemon's fall; those had been days of anger and despair, and the Dread God's influence had been steadily encroaching on her mind, accounting for much of her actions.

"I was furious at her using me, but mostly I just wanted to die," she admitted somberly, "I wasn't all that interested in living at that time."

Flemeth nodded. "An honest answer," she said appreciatively, "I suppose you felt that way because you loathed what you were becoming? Tell me, did you fancy eating the sweet Orlesian's heart?"

"_That_ is my damn business, old woman" Nyx snapped, anger swelling in her chest, "I didn't come here to get my horoscope done."

"Impatient, arrogant, and ill-tempered! My, but you would make a fine daughter," the ancient abomination exclaimed with a rustling laugh that sent a little shiver down Nyx's spine. Suddenly, the witch's arm sprang forward, pulling the elf up by her collar before she could even think of lashing out with magic. Flemeth's eyes were unblinking pits of molten sulfur, and when she spoke, the stench of her breath sent Nyx's stomach heaving.

"You will _listen_ when your elders speak," the witch hissed, "your stupidity has already cost me much, and I have little patience for ignorant half-gods with more power than wits. Anger old Flemeth, and she may well decide to wear your body for a dress. Or she may decide to wear that blood-thrall of yours."

_That_ was precisely the kind of threat that was sure to elicit a response in Nyx, and not the polite kind. The sorceress's spirit flared like a sudden brazier, hurling tendrils of searing mana at Flemeth. The witch swayed a little, but her grip on Nyx's collar did not loosen, and black stars started to dance before the elf's eyes.

"You are strong, Wolf-Born," the witch said flatly, "in the mortal realm, you _may_ best old Flemeth. But here in the Fade, you are my guest, and I will have none of your insolence. Now will you behave?"

Nyx flailed for a few more seconds before she nodded, swallowing her rage. With a satisfied smile, the witch let go of her collar, and the elf did her best to stand on numb, trembling legs.

"So?" Flemeth asked pleasantly.

"So what?"

"You did not answer my question. Did you…"

"Yes. The answer is yes!" Nyx cried out in a hoarse voice, "Why do you have to ask when you know the sodding answer?"

"The question is not what _I_ know, but what _you_ don't. Truly, I have met toadstools with more self-awareness than you have… Tell me, at which point did you stop fancying your _betrothed_ as a snack?"

Nyx ground her teeth at the malice in the witch's voice. Gone was the benign, if slightly deranged old woman she had first met in the Wilds; this younger, brasher version of Flemeth enjoyed toying with her and made no mystery of it.

"I didn't… _Fen'Harel_ didn't try to hurt Leliana after I completed the Blood Ruby ritual," she said sullenly.

"Ah, Boreas's artless little ritual. I suppose you thought that was a stroke of genius on your part: snatching Fen'Harel's sacrificial lamb from His very maw. And in replacement, what did you feed the Dread God? Small children? _A dozen bleating elves_?" Flemeth's voice rose sharply, and her yellow eyes glistened with anger as she pointed an accusatory index at Nyx. "Of course not! _You_ knew better! Instead of the destined sacrifice, you fed Him Urthemiel, no less! And so our fairy tale was to end: the Archdemon was dead, the Devourer tricked, Flemeth's plans were _ruined_ and the Warden and her beloved lived happily ever after… Or perhaps they will not, because Fen'Harel will devour them with the rest!"

"What… what _sacrifice_? What the hell are you talking about?" Nyx stuttered in utter confusion. Flemeth threw her hands up in the air in disgust.

"And here we are again: blessed _ignorance_! I plotted the Old God's capture for centuries, planning night and day, arranging for every single little detail, only to be foiled by Fen'Harel's ignorant runt! _Hyaa'shial-nara Fen'Harel sheshkaloi_…" The witch's gaze grew distant as she muttered a long string of curses in a language eerily reminiscent of Sten's guttural tongue. After a while, Flemeth emerged from her reverie, and Nyx recoiled from the malice that showed in the ancient, yellow eyes.

"Did you believe you were _unique_?" Flemeth's voice was now a low, bitter hiss. "The only Wolf Born to ever stain Thedas with your presence? There have been _hundreds_ of Wolf Born, and as many Betrothed. You were part of an ancient cycle of death and rebirth. The lovers are born, find each other, and are sacrificed so that the Dread Wolf is kept chained in the Fade, yes, that is how the ritual works. _This_ was to be your destiny. Instead, you doomed Thedas, and I, Flemeth of the Wilds, was too obsessed with my own plans to recognize you for what you were."

_This was to be your destiny._ Flemeth's revelations cast a grim new light on the events of Nyx's life, from her stolen childhood to her final confrontation with the Archdemon. She should have felt betrayed, she thought; betrayed, angry and desperate. But she didn't. Ultimately, Nyx _didn't care_.

Because in the end, there was no such thing as destiny. Nyx knew this just as she knew that fire is hot and that the sun doesn't shine at night. Nyx would never accept a destiny in which Leliana had to be sacrificed, even if it was for the greater good. The same fierce independence that had led Duncan to choose her over more conventional recruits had also proven to be her failure as a Grey Warden. Nyx would not yield, not to the Wardens, not to the elven gods, and certainly _not_ to some vague, arbitrary notion of fate.

"Do you…" Nyx's voice came a whisper out of her dry mouth, and she cleared her throat before continuing, "Do you expect an apology, perhaps? I offer none. And if you expect me to sacrifice my life and Leliana's, you are sorely mistaken. I will see Thedas burn before I do that. Now the question is, can you help me stop Fen'Harel?"

"You have ears, but you do not hear, Wolf Born," Flemeth retorted bitterly, "I would gladly see you and your Leliana jump into a volcano, but it would not change a thing, though it might buy the rest of us a little time. The damage you did is beyond repair."

Nyx closed her eyes. Her anger was ebbing away, leaving her feeling bitter and drained, but curiously clear-headed. The witch was talking too much, going to great lengths to explain the direness of her situation, and that probably meant that she had plans of her own.

"How does it work, exactly? This ritual, I mean? And why is Fen'Harel chained? The legends say _He_ is the one who exiled the elven gods, not the other way around…"

The witch shrugged. "Flemeth wasn't around when the Dread Wolf was chained," she said dryly, "and as you know, much of the elven lore has been lost. The legends that circulate around the Dalish camps are hardly reliable."

"So you have no idea how to stop Fen'Harel?"

From some faraway corner of the Fade, a long, strident complaint rose, the cry of a demon facing annihilation. The sound was brutally interrupted, and Nyx thought she saw Flemeth's eyelid twitch a little.

"He will not spare you, Flemeth," the sorceress said softly, "Help me stop Him."

A pale smile played on the ancient abomination's lips, and she stepped forward, an elegant white hand raised as though to touch the elf's face. Nyx involuntary recoiled from the touch, and Flemeth's smile widened at her fear and disgust.

"Flemeth's help always comes at a price, Wolf Born. Will you pay her a boon?"

Nyx crossed her arms and tried to hide the rush of hope that knotted her gut. "You are hardly in a position to ask for boons, witch," she groaned, "The Dread Wolf will be at your door soon enough, won't He?"

"Aye, that He will," Flemeth said with a rattling laugh, "But _I_ can sit and face death and regret nothing, for I have nothing to lose. But _you_? I do not believe so, dear…"

There was a long, uncomfortable pause during which Nyx hesitated, her mind racing to find arguments forceful enough to compel the witch. She found none, and finally acknowledged her defeat with a little grimace. "Name your prize," she said through clenched teeth, _"and be off to Hell,"_ she added mentally.

Amid the wails and cries of the dying demons, Flemeth named her prize, and Nyx balked at her demands, arguing and threatening and cajoling; all in vain. For unlike the witch, Nyx had much to lose.

In the end, of course, Nyx accepted.


	27. Chapter 27: Eater of nightmares

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Eater of nightmares**

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Thanks to all readers for bearing with me in spite of highly episodic updates.

* * *

"So… Let me get this straight. You're heading off into the Deep Roads because the ghost of a mythical witch told you, _in a dream_, that you would find a guide there?"

The conspirators were gathered once more around Louis's vast dining table, Nyx's old companions and the half-dwarf's gang mingling with genuine camaraderie. All eyes turned to the elf; Nyx frowned and clucked her tongue.

"If you insist that the Fade is nothing more than a dream, then that's the gist of it, yes," she said flatly.

"Hey, _I_ wouldn't know a dream if it punched me in the kidney," Louis retorted, raising an eyebrow in a way that said he _did_, however, know a crazy idea when he heard one, "but isn't that what the Fade is all about?"

The sorceress's jaw set dangerously and Leliana jumped in to avoid unpleasantness. "Louis," she said in a conciliatory tone, "if you deal with magi, you'll have to accept that a certain number of funny things may be true. If you can accept that Nyx can create fire with her bare hands, why can't you believe that she met Flemeth in the Fade?"

The master spy nodded curtly, conceding the point to his former protégée. "Look," he sighed, "it's not just the whys that bothers me. By all rights, I shouldn't let you sneak out of Val Royeaux when you're so obviously connected with that Light Bearer conspiracy. The mere fact that I haven't locked you up for interrogation could cost me my head in the current political climate. Celene is out for blood."

Nyx's pointed ears cocked back very slightly, but she clenched her teeth and absorbed herself in contemplation of the many paintings that covered the walls.

"You know that would do no good to anyone," Leliana said in a friendly, but firm voice. "We are of no use to you here. You _know_ that the best way you can serve Orlais right now is to let us out, to allow us to find out the reasons behind the conspiracy." The bard seemed to create faint ripples in the Fade as she spoke. Consciously or no, Leliana was _pulling_ a little, borrowing a trickle of Nyx's power in what amounted to… some kind of unorthodox magic. _Pleasant_ magic, Nyx reflected; she smiled involuntarily as she felt the muscles in her shoulders relax. On the other side of the ornate table, Louis nodded and reached for his ubiquitous flask of liquor.

"And I suppose that I couldn't very well stop you anyway, short of calling in the sodding chevaliers", he grumbled as he poured cheap brandy into a priceless Tevinter cup. The master spy waited for a few seconds as the enchantments embedded in the smoky glass cooled the liquid down to tongue-numbing temperatures, and then drained the spirit in one swig. "Ah… Still don't fancy a shot, Arainai? It might help you grow some hair on your chest, my friend."

"I once swore that I would try _anything_ once… But today I'll stick to coffee and non-corrosive substances," Zevran said with a polite nod, "besides, if I sported chest hair _and_ Crow tattoos, spontaneous orgies would break out every time I visit a bath house."

"Been there, done that," Louis said before returning to more urgent topics. "We'll have to treat your expedition as official Imperial business, so you can use Imperial post relays to travel quickly," he said, tracing patterns on the brightly polished table with a thick index finger, "also, I'd like one of my guys to come with you, at least part of the way. Consider that a little extra I'm throwing in, Red," he said with a sly grin.

"I'm not sure…" Nyx started, but Leliana interrupted her. "Certainly," the bard said warmly, "we could do with a Dwarf in the Deep Roads. No offense, my Warden, but if we relied on your sense of directions we'd probably end up sipping tea with Sten on Seheron…"

Nyx blushed to the root of her black hair. "Fine," she murmured. On the other side of the table, Zevran chuckled, and the sorceress glared at him menacingly. The assassin's mirth didn't abate.

"I was thinking about Toast," Louis said tentatively, pointing at the silent dwarf standing behind Alistair's seat, "if you don't mind going back underground."

The diminutive bodyguard raised an eyebrow, stretching the elaborate lattice of scar tissue that covered most of her face. "Wouldn't mind being underside," Toast said in the casteless's drawl, "Just tell me if you plan on visiting Orzammar. You might want to, ya know, leave me under the doormat."

"Toast has had problems with the law in Orzammar," Louis said in response to Leliana's questioning glance, "like most dwarves who end up in Val Royaux, really. But she's the only stone-born in my crew. Marteau and the others would get lost in a wine cellar."

"Pardon me, but wouldn't that be inconvenient? What if we meet Orzammar patrols in the Deep Roads?" Zevran asked. Nyx didn't ask who the assassin thought "we" was. Leliana's gratitude flowed through the Bond, and the sorceress braced herself against the emotional onslaught with a little grimace.

"I doubt warriors in the Deep Roads will bother with legalities," Louis said, "but it's entirely up to you. You can enter the Deep Roads in Orlais and go about your business the fast way; or you can backtrack all the way to Orzammar and get a guide there."

_A guide to find the lost_. Nyx shook her head at the absurdity of the situation. Flemeth had mentioned that the object of her quest had disappeared in the Deep Roads, probably somewhere below the Dales. Nyx thought of the frozen road through Gherlen's pass, of the frozen remains of Ser Jehan, and of the taint waiting in his bones.

"We can ill afford the delay," she said flatly, "And we'll take all the help we can get, with our thanks, Ser Louis." Leliana felt her unease and looked at her with bright, interrogative blue eyes. Nyx forced herself to smile.

* * *

They spent much of the day discussing the details of the upcoming expedition, and even more time stocking up on provisions and equipment, some of it "borrowed" from imperial supplies. Nyx relished the frenetic activity; it kept her mind off the threat of the Dread God and her recent meeting with Flemeth. She probably shouldn't have lied about the nature of her pact with the witch. But Leliana was a _complicated_ person, and there were things she may not be ready to face, at least not until there was no looking back.

Once most of the preparations were made, Leliana sat with Louis in his grand dining room, drinking like a dwarf and talking about past events and long-gone acquaintances. After a while, Nyx excused herself and wandered the corridors of Louis's vast mansion, browsing the rich collections of art and antiques and smirking at the gaudy display. A man's home says a lot about them; the mansion's contents told a surprisingly candid story, that of a man forever caught between two worlds.

Nyx paused before a precious Tevinter marble statue, the bust of a young man that appeared to be a representation of Urthemiel's human form. The statue was exquisitely rendered. The only indication of the god's draconic nature was cold, reptilian disks of jade set where human eyes should be. Nyx shivered as she examined the statue, striving, unsuccessfully, to reconcile the memories of the tainted dragon with the youthful, smiling deity. The Tevinter of the classical period, it seemed, had been very good at deceiving themselves.

"So many precious objects, strewn about with so little protection. This place is practically begging to be robbed."

Nyx jumped as Zevran's voice rose just behind her back. The Antivan made a habit of sneaking up on people undetected, and even these days, the sorceress found the habit a little unsettling.

"Well, if you feel lucky, that guy Louis seems as likely to reward your audacity as he is to kill you," she said.

"Ah, but I am an assassin, not a thief," Zevran retorted in mock hurt, "please let me enjoy what little professional pride I have left. Besides, Leliana's half-dwarf friend and I are practically associates."

Nyx raised an eyebrow. "Did he convince you to take on the Crows in Antiva?" she asked half-jokingly.

Zevran laughed aloud. "Nothing so heroic, although the Crow's obsession with… erasing their past mistakes, so to speak, is a subject of discontent for the both of us. But for now our partnership will be limited to opening and operating an Antivan bathhouse in the diplomatic quarter. We will have the best wine cellar this side of the Minanter River, and genuine Antivan beauties, trained in Orlesian bardic arts, will entertain diplomats from all over Thedas…"

"Right. That sounds like a safe environment for a diplomat."

"Well, that's rather the point, really..."

"And you're not worried about the coming war?"

"Brothels and taverns are statistically the safest businesses to run during a war. Besides, aren't we going to head off the evil Light Bearer conspiracy?"

Nyx was silent for a moment. "The Light Bearers are not really my priority at the moment, Zev," she finally said.

"Compared to the Elven gods? Probably not."

The sorceress opened wide, incredulous eyes, and Zevran chuckled good-humoredly. "Never keep secrets from a Crow," he said, "especially a Crow you're traveling with. Leliana spoke a little in her sleep. Once we got here and I had access to the Light Bearers' correspondence, it didn't take a mage to figure out the mess you were in."

Zevran waited for the inevitable burst of temper. Instead, Nyx merely nodded, deep lines of fatigue and sadness etched across the black swirls of tattoos. It was becoming increasingly difficult to recognize the youthful mage that had so narrowly escaped his blade, an eternity ago.

"So you know," Nyx said, closing her eyes wearily, "what do you plan to do about it?"

"I wouldn't have come to you if I planned on betraying you," Zevran said softly, "I have a favor to ask, yes, but it will be for old time's sake."

"Just spit it out, Zev."

Zevran looked uncommonly serious, his features set in the calm, almost solemn expression he displayed during the hardest battles.

"I wish to be with you when you take the fight to Fen'Harel. I find myself sleeping poorly these days. I have been dreaming that something in the Fade was actively looking for me, and not to give me a friendly hug, if you know what I mean. I have always wanted to finish my life in bed… but not like that. If I have any choice in the matter, I would rather not go down without a fight."

"You will always surprise me, assassin," Nyx said, "you could spend your last days swimming in Orlesian ass, and instead you'll risk your hide with… _us_."

"Yes, well, should you feel overcome with gratitude, I can always think of an appropriately shocking request."

"Huh-huh, I'll pass. It's good to have you along, though. I never got to thanking you for your help."

Zevran landed a playful punch on the sorceress's shoulder, staggering her and smirking at the dark look she cast him.

"My dear Warden, thanks are superfluous. Our tribulations have already made me a very wealthy elf, not to mention a free man. With any luck, we will end up plundering the elven gods' treasure trove, and I shall become so filthy rich that I will have to hire a buffoon to remind me of my humble beginnings."

They were quiet for a while. The silence of the hall was only broken by the faint echoes of laughter, drifting in from the dining room. Leliana's voice rose above the sounds of revelry, clear and carefree as she struck up a merry tune. Something passed between the silent elves, subtle signals carried by minute changes in scent and ear position; hints of rivalry, the acknowledgment of kinship, and the certitude of a shared goal.

* * *

They left Louis's mansion before dawn; the streets were silent, and the breeze carried a chill that caused Nyx's companions to pull their cloaks close to their bodies. As they neared Val Royeaux's massive Eastern Gate, the battlements silhouetted darkly against the blanching sky, the wind receded, and thin snowflakes slowly descended upon the wakening city. It was the first snow of the year, but it had an oddly cheerless quality about it, as though the snow was but the precursor of a greater chill to come, heralding not snowmen and merry children, but cold, and silence, and stillness.

As they reached the gates, Louis stopped exchange a few words with an obviously intimidated captain of the guard, and Leliana reined in her horse to look back at the city where a red-haired child had played and a bard had been betrayed. Val Royeaux was quiet, its joyous song now hushed by the specter of civil war and the falling snow. It was too easy, she thought, to see a reflection of herself in the spoiled beauty of the city, in the symmetry of its boulevards, the deceitful maze of its alleys, the simple grace of its gardens. Leliana's eyes drifted to the husk of the Great Cathedral, that which had been the heart of the city, once radiant in its gilded corruption, and which now lay blackened and hollowed, destroyed by the very men and women who were sworn to protect it.

Shuddering, Leliana averted her gaze. A tattooed face peered at her intently from atop a Tevinter-breed poney, one of very few mounts that accepted to carry Nyx in spite of the invisible threat that seeped through her pores.

"It will be rebuilt," Nyx said, with perhaps a shade of regret in her voice. Leliana simply nodded, and spurred her horse through the gates. Louis, Papillon and Alistair were waiting there, the latter harboring the sort of contrite expression commonly associated with beaten dogs.

"Well," Louis said, "this is where our roads part. I wish you all the best of luck on your journey – and please don't forget to pass on any useful information through the Post or any traveler you deem reliable," he said, the latter words being more particularly addressed to Toast. The dwarf groaned something through the multiple layers of wool she had wrapped around her light leather helm; obviously, Nyx's new guide didn't much care for teary-eyed goodbyes.

Alistair, on the other end, seemed positively downtrodden, and on the verge of doing something stupid, like running away from Val Royeaux in his pearl-strewn stately garments and the feather-garnished extravaganza that passed for a hat this particular week. All in all, he looked like a very miserable peacock.

"Well…" he started.

"Goodbye, dear Alistair," Leliana said with her warmest smile, "it was good seeing you. Maybe we'll see you again after this is all over, yes? We will compare the merits of Fereldan whiskies and Orlais' fine wines… not to mention your other distractions," she added with a wink that sent the former warrior into a blushing fit.

"I wish I could go with you. You have no idea how _useless_ I feel…"

"You can do a lot of good here," Leliana said, "both with the Grey Wardens and because of your connections within Fereldan nobility. There are rumors of mobilization down South, and I don't need to tell you what will happen if Ferelden's weakened armies try to storm Orlais. Celene will not go down easily. It will be a bloodbath."

Alistair nodded somberly.

"Yes, I know. I just wish things were different, that's all. I wish I had… You know."

"Yes," Zevran chimed in, "but look at the bright side of it: instead of breaking Orlesian hearts, you could be married to Anora… and you'd probably still be a virgin."

Alistair's blush deepened, but the rueful grin he addressed the elf was a far cry from his Chantry days.

"I suppose there _are_ compensations," he admitted.

"So long, Prince Charming," Nyx said as she maneuvered her pony before the former Templar, "for what it's worth, I'm glad you were an idiot and walked away. It would have _annoyed_ me to enthrall your ass and make you slay the Archdemon in my place. Believe me when I say Loghain got a lucky break."

Alistair blinked and opened his mouth, but the sorceress spurred her diminutive mount before he could think of something to say, and the little group moved off with the soft clack-clack of hooves on the pavement. Then the snow and the rising mists swallowed them, and they were gone.

* * *

Those were silent days.

Winter was upon the country; snow fell intermittently, turning the roads to icy sludge that made cutting through fields a safer alternative. The leaden clouds never cleared out, and what little light filtered through reflected dully on the snow, so that the woods and barren fields were just splotches of dirty gray on dirty white.

At first, Zevran and Leliana tried their best to keep the banter going during the long ride, the bard naming the towns and villages they crossed along the road, telling her companions of local legends and history. For his part, Zevran commented on the peasant girls and ruddy farm boys that caught his fancy, or launched into vastly exaggerated narrations of his Antivan adventures. Nyx was often too absorbed in her inner world to pay heed, though, her mind-eyes alert to the minute variations in the Veil that betrayed the faraway presence of mage-born and, increasingly, to the abnormal resonance of _other_ beings.

She felt them scuttle around the silent countryside, things that hid and sung in the deep hollows between the hills, and spawned in the cool shells of abandoned farms. Unlike the cramp and nausea that announced darkspawn, Nyx perceived the beings as a lulling, complacent music that played below the audible range and slowly, gently gnawed at the barrier between the Fade and the lands of the living. More unsettling was the sense of familiarity, the unspoken understanding that said much about _her_. Nyx suspected that Leliana felt them, too, although the bard's perception was still nowhere as keen as hers; but sometimes Leliana would fall silent in the midst of a sentence or a song, and a shadow would passed over her face.

Whenever possible, the companions spent the nights at inns or post relays, and the warmth and company they found there helped to dissipate the glumness of the day. They would sit before a roaring fire and exchange stories with other travelers; money would flow freely from Zevran or Leliana's apparently inexhaustible purses, and the common rooms would fill with the smell of ale and roasted meats. Zevran would flirt with the serving girls, although most humans in the countryside seemed to consider elves with a mix of curiosity and unease, and occasionally even Toast would throw in a few words, adding her particular flavor of acerbic wit to the conversation.

At night Nyx would abscond from the rooms she and Zevran were supposed to share in servants' quarters, and no question was ever raised when the scary-looking elf slipped into her mistress's quarters. For while the appearance of respectability was important, it was well understood in Orlais that folks had a right to their privacy, and that one man's – or woman's- little sins were mostly an affair between them and the Maker. More than the food or the warmth, Nyx and Leliana were grateful for the intimacy the inns offered, for the chance to share a bed and forget, for a time, the threat that hung over them.

And sometimes, after she had cried out Leliana's name and watched her human lover fall asleep, Nyx stayed awake in the darkened room, the ambers from the stove or fireplace reflected in the cold mirrors of her eyes. She stood watch over her sleeping bard, and when the visions came upon Leliana, she held her hand, whispered soothingly, and wondered.

* * *

The stench is unpleasant. Perched atop the town's temple, a pyramid of roughly cut stone blocks that look like they could have been assembled by a giant, idiotic child, the Lady of the Hunt frowns in disgust.

The town, if this haphazard gathering of low adobe buildings huddled around the temple can be called so, is literally awash in garbage and excrement. Even the upper caste's abodes – those are grouped closest to the temple, and built of stone rather than mud- are grossly inadequate, in spite of the hundreds of slave laborers that used to toil in them.

Andruil snarls in irritation. _Slaves.._. Even now, she finds it hard to wrap her mind around the concept. Andruil knows prey and kin. Apparently, the wyrmlings have made a mockery of all civilized concepts and come up with their own, perverted imitations of Arlathan. In place of living gods, they have crude statues of the sleeping Old Wyrms. In place of a covenant between mortals and their gods, they have based their society on chains and cages in which they trap their own. And in place of Arlathan's gracious spires, they pile up chunks of rock and mud. It is no wonder that her Lord has long spoken of the need to cull the wyrmlings' expansion.

With a thud and a groan of crushed rock, the Wolf Lord lands by Andruil's side. His presence seems to fill the human town, and she feels the pyramid settle down a little to accommodate his mass. Pride, along with softer, less common emotions fill her as the king of the gods smiles and gently caresses her belly, the tiny bump hardly perceptible below great threads of muscle.

Andruil doesn't like to think about what they have done in that vault hidden deep under Arlathan. Her Lord demanded her help, and she has obliged, weaving charms and unraveling the wards per his instructions as he allowed himself to be caught in the shimmering pillar that stood in the center of the vault. The Goddess of the Hunt remembers trembling like a newborn cub when the thing trapped in the pillar opened its many arms, welcoming its would-be slayer with obscene avidity. The Wolf Lord has stepped into the light; his body has dissolved into a black mist of essence. He has faced the doom of the Ancestors, and the Trespasser has consumed him.

Yet, the Wolf Lord lives. As the Sun God hoped when he created him, his essence – part divine and part Trespasser– has proven too much for the ancient foe to assimilate. Andruil has watched speechless as the bane of the Ancestors shrieked and writhed, its strange, metallic substance blackening and collapsing upon itself as it was taken over and devoured from within.

"I see the elves are ready, My Lady. Let the hunt begin. "

Andruil nods. Vague fear knots her gut in spite of her confidence in her mate's strength. She knows that her brothers have been muttering behind her Lord's back, and Sylaise has sought her to confide her misgivings about the King's plan. She has done her best to assuage her sister's fears, but she cannot help wondering if this is really the best option.

_But do the gods truly have a choice? _

There has been an incursion. It did not take place in Arlathan, and no god has fallen victim to the Trespassers, but Andruil has been on site. She has seen the signs in the ravaged flesh of elven hunters, of their dogs and hallah. No one knows why the Trespassers sometimes attack mortals, but when they do, they are _very _thorough. Maybe, Andruil reflects, it is their way of sending a message to the gods.

The goddess snarls in cold rage. More than the violence or the deaths, what infuriates her is that the promise of the gods has been desecrated. The elves' spirits have been wrenched from their torn bodies; there will be no uthenera for Andruil's hunters.

But the Wolf Lord will not be intimidated; he will not hide in some fortress and wait for the bane of the gods to come for him. Today, the gods have armed themselves for war. They have raised an elven army, the warriors intoxicated with magical elixirs and promises of honor; and they have marched to the human town on the edge of the forest, that forgetful town which keeps blithely sending woodcutters into the outskirts of Arlathan's sacred woods, unaware that the elven gods never forget an offense. The mere appearance of Falon'Din, wreathed in deathly miasma, has been enough to subjugate the town's defenses.

Now, the ambush is ready.

The fledglings have been left to their own devices, for the gods do not hunt unripe game. The others, masters and slaves, mages and artisans, have been gathered on the square before the pyramid, and the gods have taken position on the stairs of the temple.

Andruil feels a strange emotion stir as her Lord raises his hand; it is almost as though some part of her were fighting for control. Beyond the abyss of time, Nyx watches Leliana's lips move in silent, futile plea.

The Wolf God lets his dark hand fall, and a cloud of arrows rises from the elven ranks, the tips shining darkly at the apex of their flight. The arrows fall, burying into flesh and bone, only to be replaced by more projectiles. The massacre is over in seconds, and as the souls of the dead rush into the Beyond, gods and elven mages watch the Veil bend, shudder, and tear.

The dead town is now silent but for the hiss of gases released from torn lungs and guts, the sigh of the wind playing through the elves' bowstrings, and the gay murmur of blood gathering along the drains. The life force of the town folks mingles and flows away, starting a long, blind journey towards the distant sea.

Then, with horrible suddenness, they are here.

There are three of them, vague metallic shapes that flow and grind, dissolve and reform in a blur of claws, fangs and articulated limbs. They pass trough the northern contingent of the elven army like trine waves of blades, cutting and ripping through armored bodies as though they were water, slithering on the bloody pavement with the sinister purpose of hungry leeches.

The Trespassers close in on the gods with maddening speed, and the Wolf God finally gives the signal to attack.

Arrows and spells rise from the elven ranks like a thick mist, only to shatter on metal carapaces like rain on rocks. From the assembled gods, bolts and arrows of solid light erupt, and the insane things' progress somewhat slows down as they erect powerful barriers. Chunks of chrome-like carapaces are blown off; metallic ichors seep through the cracks, and still the Trespassers advance.

Screaming a challenge, Andruil hurls her spear at one of the writhing terrors. The Trespasser rears up with an ultrasonic screech; the Wolf Lord rumbles in approval as he shifts and grows, then leaps to meet his wounded foe before it can retreat through the Veil. The Great Wolf's mass hits the Trespasser with the force of a small tsunami, flattening and warping its carapace, his paws driving the creature deep into the ground. The Wolf's deadly jaw snaps and crushes, tearing off and discarding limbs like articulated blades and chunks of half-sentient matter. The Trepasser's centipede-like tail wraps itself around the god, slicing and ripping through divine flesh, but the Wolf only burrows his fangs deeper.

The other gods are engaging the other Trespassers, striving to keep them away from their King while desperately avoiding their assaults. Andruils zooms around the battlefield on crackling energy wings. She sees Dirthamen loose an arm to scythe-like appendages, and she hurls a barrage of spirit arrows at the beast that looms above her brother, distracting it just long enough for the wounded god to dash away. Spinning mandibles and barbed horns turn towards Andruil, and she prepares to duck the onslaught. The beast stinks of hot iron and burning blood.

A triumphant growl shakes the ground, and the Trespasser's buzzing mass freezes, its multiple eyes, antennae and tongues scanning the air behind her with unmistakable nervousness. Andruil savors the stupefaction on her siblings' faces as she turns to watch her Lord's victory, shivering only a little at what she sees.

The Great Wolf's head has almost entirely disappeared into the Trespasser's torn carapace. The black fur on his neck ripples oddly as essence overflows from his maw, seeping through the Trespasser's innards, conquering, assimilating. As the gods watch, the Trespasser seems to crumble upon itself, shrinking rapidly until nothing is left but a cloud of dark particles quickly being absorbed into the immobile, shivering form of the Wolf.

Andruil feels the remaining Trespassers hesitate, their rudimentary intelligence failing to make sense of their kin's demise. With an ululating cry of victory, she gathers her strength and dashes towards the closest enemy, throwing spears of light as she goes. The creature clicks and groans, bladed arms and glittering stingers waving indecisively through the air, and slowly backs away from the goddess's onslaught. Then, as suddenly as they have appeared, the Trespassers are gone.

The ruined town is silent for a few moments as gods and elves hold their breath in the expectation of their return. Then, as though answering some unspoken signal, the elven army erupts in cheers, prayers and fragments of improvised poems proclaiming the renewed supremacy of their gods and their king.

"Hail the Great Wolf," the elves chant, "Hail the Dread Slayer. Hail the Eater of Nightmares. Hail the Dread Wolf."

The Wolf Lord, back to his elven form, listens and smiles. Elgar'Nan reigned as the All-Father; _he _has yet to chose a reigning name. His lips move soundlessly, savoring the words.

_Dread Wolf. _Fen'Harel_. Yes, that will do. _


	28. Chapter 28: Deep down

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Deep down  
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Many thanks for faves, reviews, etc.

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Calling the Pic de l'Ours a _peak_ was a vast exaggeration. At best, the Pic de l'Ours was a gently sloping hill a few miles East of Montsimmard, unremarkable in any way except for the ruined stone gates that opened mid-way between the woodland below and the grassy top, now covered with dirty snow like the rest of the landscape.

The companions paused to unload their belongings in the shadow of huge, broken stone pillars. Horses were of little use, and would find even less sustenance, in the cool darkness under the earth, and so it had been agreed to leave the mounts in the care of the local Imperial Guards, who had dispatched two men to lead the little group to the entrance of the Deep Roads.

Nyx examined the ruins curiously. They were covered in half-erased geometric carvings that clearly showed their Dwarven origin; Nyx noticed with an uneasy feeling that most of the humanoid silhouettes in the bas-reliefs – dwarven paragons, she would have guessed- had been disfigured by rough hands, the faces chipped away and sometimes replaced with the crudely scratched semblance of what could be cows'– or dragons'- heads. One of the local guides, an Imperial Guard called Louchard, noticed her expression and took it upon himself to assuage her fears.

"There haven't been any reports of darkspawn coming through the Bear's Gate in over a hundred years," he said in Montsimmard's slow, rolling Orlesian, "these days, them shepherds even use the entrance to shelter their beasts from bad weather. Don't know about what's _down there_, though."

Nyx nodded. She would be aware of the presence of darkspawn well before the creatures sensed _her _anyway, a precious ability that had only become more reliable as the taint further spread through her body.

Not far to her right, Leliana fumbled with her pack with a whispered curse. Nyx watched the redhead with some concern. The bard's narrow escape from the horde in Denerim had left some deep, unseen scars. By her own avow, Leliana was unsure how she would react in the presence of darkspawn, and Nyx could not help feeling sorry for dragging her down into the Deep Roads again. The sorceress clenched her dead hand for a second, letting the seething pain remind her of the urgency of her quest.

Zevran seemingly materialized by Leliana's side; his nimble fingers found the buckle that had caught in the saddle, and then he was off again, chatting with Toast as happily and naturally as if the dwarf had actually answered any of his jokes, or shown any sign of interest. Deep inside, Nyx had to admit that she envied Zevran's easy, friendly manner and seemingly unshakable optimism.

To be honest, these days, Nyx was a little envious of _anyone_ who was not a dark god's chosen vessel.

"You're going to be OK?"

Leliana met her gaze with a brave smile, her clear blue eyes betraying just enough contained fear to make the sorceress's heart ache.

"I will be fine, my Warden. I know you will be here for me. And there is nothing like facing your fears, yes? At least that's what the old tales say."

"Forget the tales. I'd rather not face the smelly bastards if possible."

"What, no bloodshed? No pain and mayhem? Are you sure that you're the same Warden I met in Ferelden?" Zevran chimed in from a safe distance.

"If you really miss pain," the sorceress groaned, "I could still roast your ass, Antivan."

"_Roas_t? Is this a Tower euphemism?" Zevran exclaimed with a bright smile. Nyx was going to retort when Toast cast them all a withering look and cleared her throat noisily.

"All right, Lords and Ladies," the diminutive dwarf said in a sharp tone, "I'd 'preciate if y'all could keep it _down_ once we're underside. Most beasties down there hunt by ear and nose, so either speak real quiet or even better, _shut yer gobs_. Better cut down on the perfume, too," she added with a pointed look at Leliana.

The companions looked at each other. This was by far the longest speech they had ever heard coming from their guide, and the demonstration of authority was all the more startling for it.

"But of course," Zevran purred with a little bow, his eyes sparkling with amusement, "who could resist such a charming invitation? I shall be as quiet as a Chantry mouse, I promise."

"And before long, we will all smell just like mabari puppies," Leliana added with a good-humored smile that fell a mile short of winning over the frowning dwarf. Nyx considered reminding Toast about her own experience in the Deep Roads, remembered how heavily she had relied on Oghren, and thought better of it.

"Surfacers," Toast grumbled below her breath as she pivoted on her heels and marched decisively into the gates' looming shadow, "always think they now better."

* * *

Had it not been for the Bond, Leliana may not have been able to make it.

Beyond the entrance hall, a large, relatively unadorned room strewn with the ashes of shepherds' campfires and thick deposits of sheep droppings, the tunnel turned into a large, winding ramp that descended, rather sharply, into the cooler recesses of the earth. Nyx and Toast led the way; the dwarf held a lyrium-infused lantern, and a bluish wisp of mage-fire hovered about the sorceress's head like a sickly-looking star. Whether because of Toast's injunction, or because of the inherently depressing feeling of inching along a gigantic screw aimed at the center of the earth, the companions were mostly silent.

For Leliana, the descent felt like a nightmare.

Minutes -or hours - into the infernal descent, Leliana's inner world was nothing but creeping fear. She just could not shake the feeling that rough hands were about to fall onto her shoulders; that the next turn of the ramp would reveal the raw faces of hurlocks. Leliana felt that something was waiting for her, down below. Not just hurlocks, but the _others_: the ones she had not been able to kill when mercy demanded it. They would be grayed and odiously cheerful, the Maker's servants now twisted and transfigured by the dark blood, the tattered remnants of brown robes hanging like napkins from bloated necks. They would remember her failure to save them, and their forgiveness would be more terrible than their wrath.

Leliana bit her lower lip to stifle a moan and stopped, leaning heavily against a wall as she gasped for breath. The air in the tunnel was dry and tasted of dust. Leliana's instincts demanded that she fled this cage of rock and dust. Instead, she took another step forward, then another, fighting against the urge to turn and run, until breathing became a struggle and a firm grip caught her arm. Nyx peered up at her, the markings on her face moving oddly in the ghostly light of mage-fire. The sorceress raised her good hand to the bard's temple and closed her eyes. Leliana felt a soothing darkness spread through her veins, and the fear and nausea receded.

"Next time you feel like that, think you could tell me?" the sorceresses asked in a soft voice, "Or were you concerned about worrying me? I almost passed out from _your_ fear, you know. I can't imagine why you would bottle it up like this."

Leliana took a deep breath. Nyx's magic flowing through the Bond had an almost intoxicating quality about it, and she was afraid that she may start laughing hysterically. She was keenly aware of the presence of Zevran and Toast, even though their companions had been kind enough to stop a little further along the ramp. She could hear their breaths, unnaturally slow in the still air of the tunnel.

"I was serious about facing my fears, you know," she said after a moment. "If we are to face darkspawn again, I don't want this to be a problem."

"It won't." The sorceress's expression was intense; Leliana saw her nostrils flare briefly before the elf grasped the back of her neck and pulled her down into a kiss that was more hungry than tender. "You faced Fen'Harel and lived," Nyx whispered when their lips parted, "You kept me safe from a sodding _god_, Lel. The darkspawn should fear _you, _not the other way around."

Leliana nodded. "I'll… try to keep that in mind. Let's make a deal, shall we? I promise to let you know if I need your help. And in return, you will show me how to do whatever it is you just did. I would like to be able to, well, reciprocate, if the need arose," she said in a progressively more assured voice.

The sorceress raised an eyebrow. "Reaching through the Bond? You know it's _evil_ blood magic, right? I'll do my best to explain how it happens_, _but I think it's a one-way thing."

"We'll see. Would you mind walking by my side for a while? I am sure Toast can make do with her lantern, and _I_ would appreciate your company," Leliana said, tentatively taking a step forward and finding that her legs still felt a little soft.

"You can even lean on my shoulder, if you don't mind squishing a poor elf."

"Can I? Why thank you. Do let me know before you snap under my _humongous_ weight."

"Less talking, more walking?" Toast groaned from the ramp ahead.

"How about: less bitching, more guiding?" Nyx hissed under her breath as she and Leliana resumed the long, dark walk.

* * *

"So, have you ever been in this part of the Deep Roads?"

Zevran's whisper echoed faintly over walls of polished granite.

The descent down the Pic de l'Ours had taken but a few hours, after which the companions had reached the Deep Roads proper, the network of vast, derelict tunnels that used to link the cities and colonies of the fallen Dwarven Empire.

In Zevran's opinion, the tunnels they had now been trudging through for three days looked pretty much the same as those around Orzammar and the Dead Trenches. In fact, _all_ tunnels looked the same, which, coupled with the disorientation caused by the absence of the sky, meant that the Antivan had no idea whatsoever of the direction they were taking. It was a thoroughly unpleasant feeling.

But Toast always seemed to know where she was going. Whenever they came at a crossroad, the dwarf would briefly confer with Nyx, who would for some reason fidget with the contents of her pocket and then give an opinion about the general direction of their objective. The dwarf would then pick a passage, and even though the opening of said tunnel sometime seemed to point to the wrong direction, they would always end up turning back towards their goal.

Toast was competent, which meant Zevran reckoned that it would be wise to be on her good side, pun fully intended. After all, there was no saying what would happen should the dwarf decide that she was fed up with her companions and left them stranded in the Deep Roads. After the relative abundance of wildlife the Warden's companions had met in their search for lost Paragon Branka, Zevran had been surprised to find the tunnels under the Dales nearly devoid of life. Days could pass with with hardly a glimpse of a nug or a deepstalker to break the monotony of the long walk. Good luck finding food if they became lost.

Well, cannibalism was always an option, but Zevran had a distinct feeling that Leliana would entirely disapprove of eating Nyx. On the bright side, Leliana would probably disapprove of eating _him_ as well.

At any rate, Toast intrigued him. In spite or because of the huge brand, there was something dignified about her, as though she bore the mark of the casteless with a certain pride. In fact, it was not unlikely that some of the markings were posterior to childhood; Zevran thought that they may be the mark of a particular Dusttown gang. Pride in one's accomplishments, however shady those might be, was something Zevran could definitely relate with.

But the dwarf seemed to foil his displays of good will with a tenacity that would have honored a Qunari, and had greeted his offer to discuss Antivan and Dwarven culture -body art and all- with a stern indifference that annoyed him more than the Warden's frequent bouts of anger. For more than anything, Zevran hated being bored, and the long walk through identical tunnels bored him senseless. In fact, this very boredom had led him to playfully test Nyx's boiling point more than a few times in the past days, and things were getting pretty volatile, which may or may not explain why Leliana insisted on his walking ahead with their guide.

"Nope," Toast said, interrupting his reflections. "Probably hasn't been a dwarf in here since the fall of the Western thaigs."

"I see," Zevran said. _Conversation at last. How marvelous._ "But you seem to know your way around all the same. How does this stone sense of yours work, if I may ask?"

The dwarf cast him a quick, pitying look over her shoulder, but did not slow down.

"How do your eyes work? How would you describe it to a blind man?"

Zevran pondered his answer for a half-minute, thinking of an Antivan maleficar he used to know. The man had cut open throngs of cadavers, provided by the Crows or less official grave-diggers, trying to answer the same exact question. When he was drunk, he would explain that the eyes worked like the lenses of a magnifying glass, projecting a miniature, inverted image of the world. The mage's knowledge didn't extend any further, though, and his experiments had met an unfortunate end when the family of some test subject finally caught up with him.

"I see your point. Can I ask you another question?"

"_Must_ you?"

"I will take that as a yes," Zevran said optimistically. "Why haven't we met any darkspawn? Do you suppose they were all killed in Ferelden at the end of the Blight?"

"There is no end to darkspawn. They are like the lava under Orzammar: you may only see a trickle here, a river there, but in reality the city is built on a thin crust…" The tiny dwarf stopped as though to listen, her dark eyes lost in the distance. "We are still in the upper levels, elf," she finally said in a surprisingly clear voice, "the darkspawn don't come up here unless they need to hunt. But there are plenty of them below. They breed faster than you can kill them."

"I see… Should I ask whether we're going up or down?"

Toast snorted. "I thought that would be obvious, even to surface dwellers. It's _down_, duster. I hope you brought spare pants, because soon we'll be waist-deep in darkspawn filth."

* * *

Leliana woke with a start. It had been a fitful sleep; her body clock had been thrown out of sway by the constant night of the Deep Roads. Paradoxically, the further down the companions went, the more darkness gave way to an eerie gloom. Bluish or greenish veins of phosphorescent minerals were becoming more and more common in the walls of the tunnels, and sometimes she thought she heard the faint song of lyrium in its prison of rock.

Leliana lay motionless for a few seconds, listening intently, trying to spot the reason of her unease. She had a creeping feeling that something was wrong. As in response to her vigilance, her gut suddenly knotted, and a taste of bile filled her mouth.

A cool, firm hand grasped her forearm, and she turned to see the sorceress by her side. Nyx sat upright in the small alcove where the companions had set camp. Her pale skin reflected the tunnel's murky glow with an almost sinister gleam, and Leliana thought of a predator standing vigilant under the moon.

"I can feel _them_," Leliana whispered. She did not dare say their name; she felt that to do so may turn the vague menace into abominable certainty. Nyx nodded. She looked very calm, almost detached, as though the proximity of the enemy momentarily freed her of her burdens.

"They're still far. They cannot sense us, my love. Are you scared?"

Thoughts of gray flesh and torn Chantry robes fleeted through Leliana's mind, but she wrestled for control, and her voice only quavered a little when she answered.

"Terrified. I think I am going to be sick."

The sorceress nodded, and a little smile played on her pale lips as she reached for the bard's face, gently tracing her cheek with fingers that were as cool as blades. "Welcome to the Grey Wardens," she murmured, "now you know how Alistair and I felt almost every day of the past year."

"Does it ever get better?"

"I got used to it. I don't know if that's an improvement. In the last weeks before the Archdemon fell, sensing the darkspawn meant that I got to kill, and I _relished_ that." The sorceress cocked her head pensively. "Funny, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that's the way _they_ think."

"But you are nothing like them," Leliana said, gently enveloping the Warden's hand in hers, willing her own warmth to reach through the delicate, chilled bones. "You have feelings, and you are free to choose your own path. You have things to live for; you have… well…"

"You?" Nyx completed mischievously, and a little color seemed to come back to the pale cheeks. "Yes, my bard. Whatever happens to us, I hope you will remember this. Come, we should get going."

They woke Toast and Zevran, silently packed their bedrolls and left the alcove behind them, treading as quietly as possible on the rubble-covered ground until the sickening sensation in Leliana's gut all but receded, leaving only the dull, lingering feeling of hidden malice.

* * *

It took another day to reach the ruined thaig. By that time, as Toast had promised, the companions had plunged even deeper below the earth, and the traces of darkspawn occupation had become both more numerous and more recent. The group increasingly came across the creatures' crude totems, erected in apparently haphazard fashion along the narrowing, winding tunnels. Most of the totems were nothing more than junk tied together by strings of metal wire and other, obviously organic material that nobody wanted to inspect too closely.

Luckily, they never directly encountered the darkspawn, although there were several near-misses that sent Leliana's heart racing as the little group retreated precipitously to avoid detection. They seemed to be playing a sinister game of hide-and-seek, and after a while the bard caught herself almost wishing for open confrontation, rather than having to endure this nagging feeling of threat in the all-encompassing shadows.

As they made their way down, the tunnel became increasingly cluttered with garbage and broken bones; the companions sometimes had to clamber across genuine mounds of refuse. Most of the bones were ancient and crumbled under the foot, but they once came upon fresher remains in a big garbage pile. Toast spent some time foraging through the gnawed bones while Nyx and the others kept a safe distance from the stench, and they were surprised to see the dwarf bow deeply and sing a few, short verses in her guttural tongue. When Toast came back she was holding a warped copper insignia, and she drew Nyx apart to share her discovery.

"Legion," Toast said, her features set in an indecipherable expression, "dunno what they were doing this far from Orzammar. Guess no one will ever know."

"How long?" Nyx asked in a flat voice.

Toast shook her head. "Couple of weeks, one month? But Warden, we got a problem," she added in a low whisper.

"Really?" Nyx groaned, "And here I thought we were going on a leisure stroll. Out with it, then."

"There's too much trash around here. 'Spawn aren't reputed for cleanliness, and they don't usually take out their trash. This shit here…" the diminutive dwarf pointed at the mound of garbage, "this has _breeding ground_ written all over it, Warden. We keep going down, we could be in over our heads."

Nyx quickly glanced at Leliana; the bard was having a hushed conversation with Zevran, and as the sorceress watched, Leliana giggled at one of the Antivan's jokes. _Damned if I do, damned if I don't,_ Nyx thought. She might as well take her chance, and if the darkspawn overwhelmed them, she would make sure they didn't catch Leliana alive. Resolve building inside, the sorceress turned to the frowning dwarf.

"We _need_ to go," she said flatly. "If you don't have what it takes, you can wait for us here."

Toast shook her head with a little grin. "You're one crazy duster, you are. Guess that's what it takes to make a Grey Warden. Should I tell the others the good news?"

Nyx looked at Leliana; feeling her gaze, the bard turned and smiled. Nyx struggled to smile back.

"Later. We're still nowhere near the lairs."

* * *

The deepstalker squeaked and scampered on short, sturdy legs, but too late. The bolt punched neatly through the creature's delicate ribs, its barbed head emerging from the wound like an obscene blossom. The other members of the pack quickly scattered as the genlock tracker knelt by the body and ran a meat hook through the cartilaginous head. The tracker threw the dying animal onto its shoulder. The beast's thrashing felt good. There was cool, sticky blood on the tracker's misshapen fingers, and it licked them clean with a satisfied grunt.

The tracker was a small, wretched creature. The weakest of its clutch, it had almost been discarded when the adults had cut it from the pus-filled sack in which it had grown and matured for a few weeks. But its Breeder's great stomachs had been full at the time, filled to the brim with freshly killed meat, and so the wriggling larva was spared her hunger and allowed to serve the Horde to the best of its abilities, which at the present time meant _hunting_.

And hunt it must. The arrival of the iron-skinned dwarves had spurred a new breeding cycle in the lairs, and the Breeders new and old were clamoring for meat. The tracker felt their hunger; it constantly demanded its attention, dominating all other imperatives; it gnawed at its rudimentary consciousness like a canker. The lair had vomited most of its brood into the surrounding tunnels, in search of spiders, deepstalkers, nugs… anything that could run, bleed and die would momentarily soothe the Breeders' hunger.

Just as it prepared to leave with its offering of meat and blood, an unfamiliar scent caught the tracker's attention, and it whined softly as it scanned its surroundings.

_There_. In the corner, where the deepstalkers had congregated to scratch at the sandy ground.

Discarding the meat, the tracker fell on all fours, sniffing the ground like a well-trained pig looking for truffles. The genlock's bulbous fingers fumbled at the sand impatiently, and what they found made it whimper in excitement. The latrine had been carefully buried, but its contents smelled and tasted fresh. Blurred images formed in the genlock's rudimentary brains.

_Elf. Human. Dwarf. Meat and Breeders. _

Leaving the deepstalker's carcass to rot, the tracker started to run.

* * *

Just as they felt that they could not possibly tolerate another detour through narrow, cobweb-infested passages, the little group stumbled into the lost thaig's vast, open space.

By Toast's reckoning the thaig must have been one of the bigger dwarven colonies, as well as an important trading post. The reason for this statement became evident as the companions carefully made their way along rubble-encumbered streets, between stone buildings that must once have looked grand, but were now reduced to burnt-down, crumbling husks. The sound of running water started filling the ruined streets, along with the heavy smell of sulfur. Before long the companions found themselves standing on what must have once been bustling docks besides a wide, fast-running river. Thick vapors rose from the water, and the temperature was markedly higher than in the Deep Roads. Leliana thought she vaguely glimpsed the pale forms of fish playing in the current, and strange, fungal vegetation infested the river's embankment, giving the scene an otherworldly quality. Nyx turned to Toast with a questioning look.

"Any idea where we are?"

"Could be Dace Thaig. The founder of House Dace became a Paragon for building the first Dwarven boat, out of _metal_, if you can believe it," Toast said dreamily, "Dace Thaig was a big trading town on the Yellowbreath."

Leliana scanned the piers and moors further along the embankments. "Do you think there are still boats we could use?" she asked. After the long days of walking along grim tunnels, the idea of a boat ride was quite seductive. Toast cast Nyx a questioning look, and the Warden buried her hand in her pocket for a while before pointing upstream.

"It's this way. Not very far, but we must hurry."

Toast shrugged. "Then a boat won't do much good, even if we find one that can still float. That is, unless you get your hands on a bronto to haul us against the current."

_So much for our pleasant boat ride_, Leliana thought: yet another little pleasure that would have to wait until she and Nyx could finally get a well-earned rest. With a sigh, she shouldered her backpack and followed Toast's lead along the foggy river bank.

It was hot on the towpath; the steam rising from the river inspired Zevran to recount a few amusing bathhouse anecdotes, and soon every member of the group had stripped off their cloaks and was uncomfortably simmering in sweaty armor. The path was smooth, although some sections of it had crumbled into the river and the companions had to take a few detours. After a while, the vast cavern narrowed into a deep gorge; the ceiling became markedly lower, dripping tepid condensation over the already sweat-drenched travelers. At last, the group arrived to a string of dwellings carved in the rock; it could have been a towing relay, Leliana mused, with large, broken doors on the first floor leading to the stables and stairs leading to hostel rooms.

Nyx stopped before one of the broken doors, Leliana standing by her side and peering curiously into the darkness inside. A musky animal scent rose from the entrance, and the bard's fingers fidgeted nervously with the handles of her daggers.

"It's here," Nyx said. "I think you should wait for me outside. I won't be in any danger," she added for Leliana's benefit before she planted a quick peck on the bard's lips.

Her fist tightly clenched on Flemeth's token, Nyx disappeared into the musky shadow.

* * *

It was weak, and hungry.

At first the darkness of the Deep had provided all it needed to sustain its carnivorous, wretched existence. There was prey aplenty, scurrying about on short legs or hovering on leathery wings. Its metabolism was slow, anyway, so it didn't need to feed more than once a week. The temperature was mild and the humidity satisfyingly high, thanks to the vicinity of the river.

It had crawled down from the higher levels, moving always deeper in a blind bid to put as much distance as possible between its thorny hide and the surface. In the end it had come here, the deepest den it could reach without scuttling through the great lairs of the dark ones that lay close to the ruined Dwarven dwellings. For a while it had explored the neighboring tunnels, but it always came back to its den, to the friendly darkness that concealed and protected. It had thrived here for a while, finding peace in the satisfying of it_s_ basic appetites.

Sometimes the poisoned ones would clobber along the tunnels, filling the place with their stench, but it hid in crevices in the ceiling and they left it alone. Sometimes, also, members of its own genus would raise a challenge for its territory, or wander in wreathed in clouds of pheromones, hoping to exchange genetic material, but it invariably met their aspirations with sharp claws and corrosive venom, and gnawed on their succulent innards, for it was strong.

Then the fungus came.

It didn't know what a fungus was, of course, but it felt the itch, and scratched at its chitinous hide with claws of horn. But that didn't help. Within weeks, its carapace started to crack in places, and the long, pale tendrils of the fungus slowly wormed their way out of its body, bringing pain so wretched that it all but forgot to hunt. Ripping the tendrils off with its claws only made things worse, as the spores they released got into its many faceted eyes, and the fungus started claiming those, too.

Now, it was nearing the end. It could hardly move at all, a weakened husk at the mercy of any wandering predator.

It had no idea of its own mortality, of course; but something akin to despair seized it when it felt the vibration of the ground. Soft soles trod on the uneven surface of the tunnel, and the air carried a strangely ethereal scent, laced with the stench of the dark ones.

It hissed a weak challenge, and the intruder stopped just short of claw range.

Through one surviving eye, it examined the irritant, taking in the small, slim frame, the long threads of black hair, the gleam of polished leather. _This _was no creature of the deep, come to prey on its misery. Terror seeped through its rudimentary brains, and it tried to run away, but its thorny legs would not carry its weight anymore. The biped made squealing sounds and raised a sleek upper leg. A torrent of pain and fear washed over it.

It hissed in agony, its spiny legs thrashing about in torment, twisting, melting, melding.

_Becoming. _

When the pain abated, it raised a soft, sore-covered claw to its one good eye and watched stupidly, unable to make sense of the five pinkish antennae that now wriggled there. The slim figure walked confidently to its side, catching its fevered head in a cool claw. It tried to hiss in warning, and something was forced between its mandibles. Glacial fire rushed down its throat and another wave of alien sensations enveloped it, not unlike what it used to feel when its thorny claw came in contact with a trace of lyrium in the rock. It felt the fungus recoil and wither in the fire, and a little strength came back to its… _arms_, and _legs_.

With restored sight came the awareness of its true shape, and the memory of power coursing through its hands, and the faint, distant song of the Veil. And with the song came a vague, fluttering sense of identity. The ghost of a name…

"Morrigan," the slim figure called.

With lips that felt soft and alien, she tried to tell the intruder to go away, to protest that she was no such person and that no good could come from speaking that name. Then she saw the ring in Nyx's hand. Shock and recognition overwhelmed her, and for a time, Morrigan sank into merciful, soothing darkness.


	29. Chapter 29: Freely given

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Freely given**

* * *

Thanks a lot to all readers and reviewers; I had a huge grin as I read your reactions to the last chapter!

* * *

"_Of all the…"_

Leliana wasn't sure what she had expected Flemeth's "guide" to be; some kind of miniature, evil-looking dragon, perhaps, or perhaps some ancient, unholy artifact that slowly gnawed at the souls of its bearers. And yet, deep down, Leliana was not entirely surprised when Nyx emerged from the stinking darkness, effortlessly dragging a half-naked, unconscious human female. The woman was filthy and very emaciated, and her face was hidden behind a matted mess of black hair, but Leliana did not need to gaze upon the darkly beautiful features to know _her_ name. Even defeated and unconscious, there was something about the witch that made Leliana's hair stand on ends.

_A pox on Flemeth_, Leliana thought as Nyx gently lay her burden onto the stone floor. Trust Flemeth to hatch a truly wicked plan; trust the hag to burden her poor Warden with _that_, again. Nyx had told Leliana of Morrigan's defection; in the bard's eyes, it had been a foregone conclusion as well as a blessing in disguise. And now Nyx and Leliana had a new problem in addition to all their trouble, and Leliana was going to have to watch over her lover's sleep and check their food for poison.

As Nyx lay the woman's head on the floor, the tangled black hair parted, and for all her dislike of the witch, Leliana could not help feeling a pang of pity. Zevran hissed softly.

"Brasca. She looks like she hasn't eaten in ages."

Nyx nodded somberly. Through Flemeth's ring, she had felt Morrigan's life force weaken as the companions made their way through the Orlesian countryside and the dark maze of the Deep Roads; but she had not expected to find the witch so close to crossing into the Fade. The healing potion had cured the fungal infection, although the witch would probably bear pale scars for the rest of her life, but starvation was a serious issue, and one that couldn't be treated with potions or healing magic.

"Toast, can you make broth with some of the dry meat we brought from Montsimmard?"

The dwarf shrugged. "Haven't brought any coal."

"Fire isn't an issue for now," the sorceress said, and a string of blue flames danced along her outstretched palm, "although I'd like someone to look for some coal in the ruins, too."

"I'll go," Zevran offered.

"Good. Lel, think you can find something to cover Morrigan's ass? The last thing we want is for her to catch a cold now."

Leliana was tempted to point out that Morrigan had waltzed through the Ferelden Blight clad in a glorified handkerchief. "I'll look," she said in a pointedly detached voice as she started foraging through her backpack. Leliana _had_ packed an extra outfit and cape, something simple but elegant in case their travels brought the need for arts more subtle than stabbing and killing. Had she known that the dress would be worn by Morrigan, she would have chosen something a little more… skimpy, perhaps, and with more shiny bits. The kind of stuff a farm girl might wear on special occasions.

The unconscious woman moaned a little as Leliana stripped her of her filthy rags; the witch's skin was hot with fever, and her limbs felt light as a babe's in the bard's hands. Leliana felt a pang of guilt. Morrigan may be a cruel bitch, but she didn't deserve to be mocked as she lay sick in a place of stone and dust, a place that must have felt incredibly alien, if not downright terrifying, to the Korcari Wilds native.

"There you go," Leliana whispered almost tenderly as she finished wrapping Morrigan in the spare cape. Nyx was sitting on the floor a few steps away, Toast's pot set before her; bluish tongues of flame danced at her fingtertips, heating a clear broth made of Orlesian ham and bits of elfroot. Toast was nowhere to be seen, probably out scouting the river banks for edible mushrooms of some sort.

"What do you think she was doing here?" Leliana asked. Nyx didn't meet her gaze; the elf kept staring at the flames, as though wondering at the bright, flickering fingers that sprouted from her flesh.

"I think she was hiding," Nyx said just as Leliana considered walking to her and shaking her out of her reverie.

"Hiding from what?"

The cold eyes finally left the flames and turned to capture Leliana's gaze. The sorceress looked drained, and the silver disks were as lifeless as the stone around.

"I think you already know the answer. And the answer to your next question is _yes_."

Leliana felt a headache coming. This was all a misunderstanding. It had to be. "You can't be serious," she said in a carefully controlled tone. "You didn't…"

"Just say it, Lel," Nyx said wearily, "I didn't feed Morrigan to Flemeth? I _did_. Why not?"

"I…" Leliana hesitated, trying to find words to give shape to the chaos of her thoughts. But words were elusive, slippery things; they spun in her head like fallen leaves in the autumn wind.

_Betrayal_.

Betrayal was one of them, although it made no sense at all. Leliana was not naive enough to be under any illusion that Morrigan was a friend. Her alliance with the Warden had been one of convenience, and the witch had had no qualms about leaving Nyx in her darkest hour. Leliana had seen Nyx exact bloody vengeance for lesser offenses, and although she didn't like it, she could understand it. Bards knew the value of retribution. If her Warden had demanded it, Leliana would have cut Morrigan's throat without fretting.

_But this…_

"Because it's… wrong," Leliana finally said. "I thought _you_, of all people, would understand that."

The elf's face flushed under the accusing tone, and her long ears angled back slightly.

"Don't you fucking lecture me, Leliana. I don't have to justify my decisions, not to you, not to _anybody_", Nyx said in a low hiss, and Leliana felt the sorceress's anger and hurt seep through the Bond, clouding her mind like fetid vapor. Without a word, the bard rose to her feet and strode away along the muddy towpath.

Behind her, the sorceress sighed heavily; pulling a spoon from Toast's package, Nyx started feeding broth through Morrigan's cracked lips.

* * *

When she was a lay sister in Lothering, Leliana had been in the habit of getting up early to take long walks in the Fereldan countryside. It had been beautiful, and peaceful, before the Blight's approach drove the wolves and beasts mad with fear and the farmers deserted their fields. The whisper of the wind and the song of the nearby river had soothed the bard's broken soul, and every morning she went back to the cloister's duties with a song of her own.

There was no wind in the Deep; nor were there fields of gold to lend it a voice. As for the river's gurgle, it was muted and cheerless, as though the thick vapors rising from it had muffled its voice. Leliana thought she could see the faint traces of beauty in the grandiose stalactites and the glowing minerals, but it was a dead beauty, cold and lifeless, forever sterile now that the dwarves had deserted these parts. The Stone would forever mourn its children.

Leliana stopped to rest by the gurgling river. She felt hot from the quick walk, and her long, coppery hair hung damp on her face and shoulders; small rivulets of sweat streamed along her brow. A short distance upstream, the towpath was blocked where massive boulders had fallen from the cliff above. Something caught her sight, and as she neared the fallen rocks, she was surprised to discover a boat, moored to a stone bollard by the towpath. The craft was in good condition, sturdily built with a flat bottom to navigate underground rivers; judging by its size Leliana estimated it may have accommodated six –_small_- rowers. There was some spare equipment aboard, all recent and in good condition. This seemed to answer the _how_ of the Legion's presence, if not the _why_, Leliana thought as she sat on the bow.

The water was deep. It looked almost perfectly black and almost solid in the pale phosphorescence, like a large vein of polished obsidian; or maybe like black ice. Leliana thought of Nyx's fall through the dark ice; in this desolated place, the memory of the dream seemed much more real than the sunny days in Lothering. If she stepped through the ice, Leliana wondered glumly, would Nyx come for her, the way she had followed the elf's track from Denerim and all the way to Val Royeaux?

Most likely she would, her inner voice told her, and an image formed in her mind, the vision of her own body, bloated from the long stay in tepid water, reanimated by Nyx's magic and pinching the strings of her lute with soft, spongy fingers while Toast and Zevran cheered and clapped their hands.

Leliana shook her head. The imagination that made her such a good bard and storyteller was a double-edged sword. Then again, knowing Nyx, the daydream may not be so unrealistic after all. The elf's single-mindedness and determination were frightening, and Leliana had little doubt that Nyx would follow her into the Fade itself if worst came to worst. Leliana had once dreamt of a love so great it would transcend even death itself; now she understood that such a love was a truly terrifying thing. At the core, passion was all-consuming. No sacrifice was too great, and no betrayal was too low.

Leliana ought to know. She remembered it all, the bliss, the all-devouring need, the ease with which she had betrayed and killed so that she could please _the other_. Had Marjolaine molded her so thoroughly, she wondered, that she would unconsciously replicate her game and turn Nyx into her thrall, a dangerous puppet that might some day turn against her as she had turned against her master?

But there were differences, and Leliana was not so disheartened that her keen mind would be blind to them. To begin with, the mess Nyx was in had far-reaching implications; the plague that kept claiming victims throughout Ferelden and Orlais was proof enough of that. Whether or not the Dread God's threat was on a par with a Blight, Nyx's duty as a Grey Warden and protector of the land was not at odds with her more personal stake. Morrigan's life was of little consequence compared to the plague's daily toll and the greater destruction that Leliana felt may come.

Still, Leliana wished things had not come to that. Killing an enemy in combat was one thing; taking out a mark in cold blood was harder, and left deeper, uglier scars on the perpetrator's soul. Allowing a former comrade-in-arms to be used as spare vestments by an abomination was a different beast altogether. It was a pact with the demon, a violation of everything Leliana once held sacred. Ironically, the sorceress was condemning Morrigan to the very fate that awaited her, should her attempts to break free from Fen'Harel's grasp fail. Leliana's mind struggled to come to terms with the implications.

Leliana felt weak and miserable; thinking about Morrigan's fate made her feel nauseous as well. The bard buried her face in her hands, trying to shake off feelings of despair and uselessness. She remained prostrate for precious minutes, dozing off into an uneasy half-slumber, until the nausea awoke her and the reddish light filtered in between her fingers.

Leliana raised her head, and saw the flames, and ran.

* * *

When asked what their idea of a Circle mage was, most Antivans would probably have depicted a solemn-looking, graying figure, wrapped in equally stiff layers of robes and dignity. Boy, would they be _wrong_.

Well, at least Zevran knew better, he thought as the screaming, raging, cursing, and utterly insane sorceress, more reminiscent of an angry badger than an elf, dashed past him and burrowed her dagger in a badly burned genlock's eye socket. Zevran prudently stepped aside as black blood squirted from the wound, but the precaution was superfluous; the blood evaporated in mid-air, mingling with the life forces of the dead to sustain the sorceress's wrath.

Zevan saw Nyx's hands shoot forward, and he hastened to pull Toast back to safety as yet another brazier erupted from Nyx's hands, searing the flesh off the bones of nearby darkspawns and turning others into running, screaming bonfires.

"Keep your distance from her," Zevran screamed above the roar of the blaze.

An impish grin stretched Toast's facial scars. "Keep your distance from _me_, too. Axes gonna fly," the dwarf warned as she retrieved two wicked-looking axes from her belt and jumped into the fray, gyrating like a drunken Templar at a marriage party.

"You're quite welcome," Zevran muttered under his breath as he surveyed the battlefield.

Nyx had sensed the darkspawn's approach several minutes before the creatures hit them. Instead of bunkering down in the ruined hostel, which offered decent protection, the Warden had insisted that Toast and Zevran carry Morrigan on a makeshift stretcher and follow the towpath in the direction where Leliana had last been seen.

Of course, they couldn't quite outrun the genlocks while carrying their burden, and now they were fighting in the open, a position Zevran thoroughly disapproved of. It was fortunate enough that the river and the steep cliff on their right prevented the darkspawn from flanking the companions; but Zevran knew that, should the creatures finally remember to use bows, things would turn ugly_ really _fast.

Zevran's caught a glimpse of something moving beyond the smoke that rose from the charred corpses, and he swore energetically in Antivan.

"Ogres moving in! Brasca, Nyx, we need to move," he shouted above the din of the battle. The sorceress interrupted her frenzied casting, and the manic snarl was replaced with a semblance of understanding.

"You drag Morrigan's ass," Nyx shouted back, "Go find Leliana!"

Zevran didn't pause to argue that Leliana may well never be found again. You just don't argue with a berserking blood mage; besides, it wasn't like they had a lot of choice in directions. All they could do was follow the towpath and hope it didn't lead into a broodmother's nest.

Zevran groaned as he threw Morrigan's limp body across his shoulders. Humans and their big bones… The witch had better be grateful for what he was doing. Well, at the very least he would have the pleasure of constantly reminding her of her rescue. Now let's see… If he remembered well, Toast's pack was the most laden with food and water, and so Zevran tucked his dagger into his belt, grabbed the backpack with his one free hand and took to a tottering run. This situation reminded him of that time with the wife of the butchers' guild master… Good times, Zevran thought as he chuckled, huffed and puffed along the muddy towpath. _Good times_.

* * *

Leliana flew along the path like the Eastern wind. Gone were doubt and guilt, swept aside by necessity and all-powerful _need_.

Had Leliana had the leisure to think, she may have wondered at the way her breath flowed, easy and unhurried even as she dashed at breakneck speed on slippery ground. But Leliana's will was focused on the distant point where bursts of flames and blood-curdling screeches told tales of rage and bloodlust. Nyx's battle-lust streamed through her veins like thick liquor; fear and excitement drew her forward, and as she ran vague visions of other battlefields started to superimpose onto the dark gorge. Glory, bloodlust and the crackling of great wings…

She nearly bumped into Zevran as she cleared a curb of the path. The assassin was sweaty, flushed from the run and covered in ashes. Gorgeous, a predatory part of her mind told her.

"Ah, Leliana… I think…" Zevran paused to catch his breath, "I think you should run the other way. Nyx is playing with some darkspawn, but the way to the city is cut off."

The elf smelled nice, burnished wood heated by the summer sun. The witch smelled of lyrium and the musky odor of wild animals. She was much weakened, but there was power in her blood.

Leliana struggled to break from her reverie, although Zevran didn't seem to find anything odd. She spoke, and strange harmonics wove through her voice.

"There is a boat further down the path. Go and wait there. We will meet you."

An odd expression passed on Zevran's features, but he nodded and resumed running in the raft's direction. Blood sang in Leliana's ears as she dashed towards battle, and it seemed to her that her feet hardly touched the ground.

* * *

Nyx felt Leliana's presence, rushing ever closer, and waved to Toast. The dwarf was covered in gore; hopefully none of it had found its way into her eyes or mouth, or Nyx's little group would soon be short of a guide.

"We should go now," Nyx screamed at the dwarf, and Toast ran.

Nyx turned her attention back to the ogres. She had erected a wall of flames a short distance ahead, where the path was at its narrowest between the cliff and the river. The creatures stood before the flames, roaring in frustration every time they took a step forward and hastily retreated from the heat, great blisters singed on their hide. There were plenty of boulders lying around, but by now Nyx was certain the creatures wanted live prisoners. It was a sickening thought, but it gave her a tactical advantage.

Behind the lumbering beasts, genlocks were packed in a thick throng; occasionally one of the creatures lost its footing and fell into the black river. The path to the city was covered with them as far as the eye could see. There was no hope of victory against such numbers, Nyx thought, and it would be difficult to slow them down enough to make her escape. As in answer to her gloomy reflections, the horde suddenly rippled with a shared thought, and arrows came blazing through the fiery curtain. Nyx hastily erected a shield, but the effort cost her dear blood, and the blaze abated slightly.

"Having fun without me?" The bard's voice was as pleasant as though they were meeting for a fine dinner and a bottle of wine, but it created noticeable ripples in the Veil.

"Plenty. But as you can see, there's plenty left for you. I need to draw on serious power, Lel, and for that I'll need your help."

Leliana nodded. Her blood knew what must be done. "You want to channel it through me, don't you? I don't know if..."

"The Bond channeled it," Nyx corrected, "_please_," she said as she gently grasped Leliana's hand.

Leliana gasped as their minds touched and intertwined. The darkspawn horde slowed and lit up in their mind like a river of fire, their corrupted blood shining with a thick glow. The sorceress closed her eyes and relaxed, then let the Dread Wolf's power trickle through their shared being.

"_Power that corrupts_," Leliana thought darkly.

"_Not if it is freely given,"_ Nyx replied in kind. _"Are you scared, my bard?"_

"A little," Leliana admitted as she leaned to press her lips to the elf's.

"_Trust me_," Nyx thought, savoring the kiss for a second; her tongue flickered briefly against the bard's before she caught Leliana's lower lip between her teeth. _"Whatever is to come, you need never face it alone." _

Nyx bit into the fragile flesh; she felt Leliana's pain as surely as if it was her own, and she whimpered softly, but the bard didn't pull back. A coppery taste filled Nyx's mouth, and the Dread Wolf's power bled through the Bond.

A second later the wound was healed, but the dark power remained, coiled about Leliana's body like a black mist; the Veil crackled and groaned under its ponderous presence. Then Leliana moved, faster than anything Nyx had seen, and the sorceress was swept off her feet, held up effortlessly by a steel grip. Cold blue eyes glinted mischievously, and the point of a dagger pricked the soft skin under Nyx's chin.

"Are _you_ scared, my love?" the bard whispered.

"A little," Nyx said with a defiant grin. Leliana chuckled softly and set her back onto the floor.

"Time's a-wasting. Let's do it already," Nyx grumbled.

Leliana nodded and drew her bow; darkness flowed from her hands into the arrow, and with a resounding battle cry, she let fly.

* * *

Toast and Zevran heard the thunder of the explosion, followed by the bone-grinding rumble of crumbling rock, and watched in befuddlement as an expanding cloud of dust filled the gorge downstream.

"Ancestors' pebbles," Toast groaned, "did that Warden just use explosives? Does she _know_ how to do that?"

The slightly worried look on Zevran's face taught her that the Warden did _not_, and she let out a long string of colorful dwarven expletives. Instants later, Zevran's attention was distracted by the abnormal movement of the boat.

"Is it me, or is the water rising?" he asked in the tone of polite conversation. Toast's frown deepened.

"Yeah, _that's_ why screwing around with explosives is a bad idea. If the ceiling doesn't cave in on us, we've got a good chance of drowning."

"Wonderful," Zevran sighed. "Well, at least we can enjoy a hot bath before we drown."

"Sure, throw yourself off the boat. Hah!" Toast pointed to a faraway spot along the towpath. "There's the crazy elf and the redhead. You should tie the sleeping wench and yourself to the rowing benches. We'll have a rough ride."

Zevran nodded and proceeded to secure Morrigan's ankle to a nearby bench; yet another fact he would be happy to remind the witch of, assuming that they survived, of course. Soon the splashing sound of Nyx and Leliana running on the increasingly flooded towpath reached his ears, and the sorceress's panting voice rose above the noise of the river. Nyx sounded like she was having fun.

"Zev, Toast! We need to go! The water is rising!"

"No? Really?" Toast shouted back angrily. "You always this perceptive?"

"Only when she's in a good mood," Leliana quipped as she and the sorceress jumped aboard the craft.

"Very funny," Nyx said with an almost graceful smile, "now what?"

Toast finished undoing the mooring ropes, and the boat seemed to jump into the swift current. The sudden motion almost threw the sorceress above board, and she cast the dwarf a murderous glance, which Toast answered in kind.

"Now we sit and sing happy songs, of course. What do you think? Grab an oar and ROW, dusters!"


	30. Chapter 30: Of boats and witches

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Of boats and witches  
**

**

* * *

**

There is no end to the War.

The gods have won victory after victory, staging their ambushes in the crumbling ruins of human cities, slaughtering the wyrmlings by the thousands to sunder the Veil and lure in the Trespassers. Dozens of the immortal beasts have perished under the Dread Wolf's assault, their great articulated bodies writhing helplessly as the king of the gods tore the armor from their metal-like flesh and devoured their essence.

The elves sing of Fen'Harel's prowess, and something of their Lord's terrible bloodlust has passed onto them. The gardens of Arlathan are all but silent, for only children and a few caretakers have remained in the ancestral homes. The ground shakes under the footsteps of the elven armies, and all tremble before the Dread Wolf's banner.

Yet, the Trespassers keep coming.

There have been several incursions in the smaller settlements around Arlathan; every time, the sight of the devastation was enough to plunge even the most hardened warrior into stunned silence. But only elves have been taken – until today.

Andruil steps into the forest clearing, and the elven scouts bow mournfully. The gods have come, but they will not enter the clearing; even her Lord has chosen to remain under the eaves of the great trees. She can smell his wolf-form, skulking around nervously in the shadows. The killing happened in her domains, and even though the Dread Wolf now sits on Elgar'Nan's throne, he will respect her dominion.

The remains of elves and hallas are scattered about the place; the bodies are so maimed that it is almost impossible to distinguish the herders from their stock. But the object in the center of the clearing, white and immobile in the moonlight, is perfectly recognizable. A low growl escapes Andruil's lips, and the elves prudently retreat under cover of the nearby trees.

Unlike the elves, the children of Elgar' Nan are truly immortal; death and mourning are as alien to them as magic is to the Stone-children. As Andruil's finger trail softly on the dead face, she finds herself briefly wishing for tears, that she could honor the departed like mortals did. Instead, the Lady of the Hunt lets her rage build until the near- indestructible substance of her body feels ready to burst.

_They have taken Ghilan'Nain's eyes. They have taken the Essence from her, and they have left the body for the gods to find._

Andruil's body shifts and flows; moonlight reflects on dagger-like fangs, and the Goddess of the Hunt's roar fills the mourning forest. A second later, the voices of the gods echo hers, in an earth-splitting chorus that reaches deep into the Beyond. The gods have no tears, but they know vengeance.

There shall be no end to the War.

* * *

Leliana woke groggily from her fitful sleep on the much-too-short rowing bench. Her back and legs ached from the contrived position, and the vague memory of the vision did little to alleviate her mood.

At least there was no darkspawn around, thank the Maker, she thought as she stretched methodically, forcing every joint in her body to awake fully. Come to think of it, it was nearly a miracle that none of Nyx's crew had ended up drowned when the Legion boat had cleared the broiling rapids created by the fall of half a cliff into the river.

How they had made it past the darkspawn that swarmed about the ruined thaig without being turned into pin cushions by their arrows also deserved a special mention, although Nyx had mentioned something about the creatures' reproductive cycle. Ugh. Now _that_ was an unpleasant thought, and Leliana hastened to think about something else. Nyx said that she still faintly felt the darkspawn, moving a long way upstream. They were persistent, but the fast current had played in the companions' favor.

That is, if one didn't mind embarking on a blind trip to Maker-knows-where, Leliana thought as she sat up on her bench and surveyed her surroundings. The tunnel's walls and ceiling had markedly closed in onto the river, she noticed with an uneasy feeling, and they were still scrolling very fast. Here and there Leliana could see the remains of the old towpath, but most of it had crumbled away, making any attempt at landing problematic.

There had been some discussion on the previous day about the relative merit of trying their luck with the first tunnel they could spot, providing they could actually land close to it, versus sticking with the river until they found a satisfying way back into the Deep Roads. In the end, Toast's opinion had prevailed when the dwarf had pointed out that the river could provide ample food and drink.

An appetizing smell tickled Leliana's nostrils, and she turned to find Nyx handing her a tin mug full of hot fish broth. They had hardly spoken since their previous argument, and Nyx had spent the previous day sulking. Now the elf held the mug of steaming soup like an offering, and Leliana felt her heart melt at the almost childlike display.

"Hello, Cook," Leliana quipped.

"The appropriate title is _stove_, I believe," Nyx replied good-humoredly as she sat next to the bard. "It's not bad, but I'm starting to think I may catch a bat or two for a change."

"Be my guest. Bats can't be much worse than what we ate in Ferelden," Leliana said before trying the broth. It was scalding hot, and she set the mug on the bench for a while. _Everything_ was hot. After the first day of simmering in sweat, even Nyx had given up on wearing her leather armor and made do with linen shirts. The damp fabric stuck to her, and Leliana caught herself staring appreciatively. Nyx smirked and huddled against Leliana's shoulder.

"You know, even Zev stopped staring after a few hours or so," the sorceress whispered.

"You mean he hardly stares at _you, _my mage. These days our Antivan heartthrob is all about dwarves," Leliana said with a discreet nod in Toast's direction. The dwarf stood at the aft, stirring the boat with an earnest frown. Of all the companions, she seemed to bear the heat best. Zevran was asleep on his bench, a half-smile playing on his lips while he strolled along some pleasant dream, perhaps one that included dwarves.

And then of course, there was the witch. Leliana made a conscious effort not to look in Morrigan's direction, but the gloomy thought had already ruined the moment. Nyx felt her tension and grasped her hand, squeezing gently.

"You're still mad, aren't you?"

"I… Yes. I mean, no. This isn't about Morrigan," Leliana said, struggling with words in an utterly un-bardlike manner. "I know you don't share my beliefs, but there are things you cannot do, because they will soil you forever. It's not for Morrigan that I am worried. It's for you."

"You're afraid I will become like Marjolaine. I will _not_. I would never hurt you."

Leliana shivered at the barely contained intensity in the elf's low voice. The voices of the gods echoed in her head, rolling over the silent forest, and the Dread Wolf's growl dominated them all. Leliana closed her eyes.

"I know you don't want to," she said, "But you do. It hurts me to see you debase yourself by doing Flemeth's bidding. This is not you, my Warden. This is…"

"This is _Him_?" Nyx said in a hushed voice. Leliana could feel her fear shining darkly through the Bond, and rather than searching for words, she closed her arms around the small body, wishing that their roles could be inverted, that she could relieve her from her burden for a moment.

"I don't want to become like Him," Nyx finally whispered. "But I'm running out of options. That is why I allied myself with Flemeth."

"Hush, my mage. Let us speak no more," Leliana whispered, caressing the elf's hair and rocking softly, striving to reach through the Bond and wish Nyx's fear away. After a while she felt the elf relax, and the soft sound of her breathing told her that she had surrendered to sleep, a rare occurrence these days.

Basking in the smell of elven hair and the soft beating of Nyx's heart, Leliana smiled, just like every time they managed to steal a moment of peace. It was simple moments like this, she thought, that sustained her through the darkest journeys. It was moments like this that helped her forge determination for whatever must be done.

Leliana brushed a strand of raven hair from Nyx's brow. The elf felt incredibly light and warm against her, as though made of solidified flame rather than flesh, but the daggers in Leliana's belt were between them, cold and heavy as guilt.

* * *

"Maker damn those barbarians!"

Diane crumpled the message into a compact ball of spite, wishing the same on the Maker-damned Queen of Fereldan bumpkins. Helena, her personal secretary, calmly looked over her desk, waiting for the Divine Regent and de facto commander of all true Andrastians to issue her instructions.

In truth, Diane thought, there was not much that could be done at the moment. Queen Anora's order that her troops remain camped near Lake Calenhad until the abnormally early winter storms relented was perfectly reasonable, since the mountain passes to Orlais would be closed anyway.

There was more to Anora's reluctance than simple common sense, unfortunately. A half-dozen scrolls on Diane's desk suggested that the Fereldan nobility was surprisingly reluctant to commit their forces to the war effort; there were rumors of rebellion smoldering among the traditionalists, and the name of the Theirin bastard was mentioned a few times.

Unfortunately, this meant that the Fereldan army was out of commission until at least spring, depriving Diane's Exalted March of a vital distraction and allowing the wicked Empress Celene to fortify her positions in western Nevarra.

The chevaliers' advance in Nevarra had taken everyone by surprise, including Diane. It appeared that the civil war in Orlais was not progressing as well as expected, no doubt thanks to Celene's assassins eliminating rebellious nobles with bloodthirsty gusto. It seemed that the rules of the Grand Game had been suspended for a while, and nobody in Orlais was beyond Celene's wrath. Diane now wished that she had been able to assassinate the Empress instead of the Divine.

Well, no one had ever said that leading the world to its salvation was an easy endeavor, Diane thought with a thin smile. In spite of the recent setbacks, the war against Orlais was far from lost, with Antivan contingents marching through the Free Marches to join the Nevarran front.

_Maker, but Diane felt tired_. She had hardly slept in weeks; the dark presence in the Fade hounded her every step, and only the spirits grafted to her flesh sustained her through the ordeal. Diane rose from her comfortable seat and walked hesitantly to the front entrance of the chariot. Helena held the curtains apart to let her pass, and Diane stepped onto the drivers' platform.

It was cool outside, Diane realized with a little shiver, much too cool for central Nevarra this early in the winter, and the sky was overcast with low, heavy clouds that seemed to suck the Maker's light out of His world. Soon, she suspected, the bleak wasteland that was the Silent Plains would see snow fall, for the first time in ages. Here, Diane knew, the Grey Wardens had defeated the Archdemon Dumat, but not before the Old God and its hordes had spoiled the land beyond all repair, turning once-verdant prairies into poisoned desert. Diane wondered it Dumat had known of the secret lying hidden in this barren land.

Helena's voice rose, clear and movingly pure above the noise of the moving chariot and the faint whisper of the wind.

"_Our Maker is Light, so is the Other shadow. _

_Moon to His sun; cold to His warmth. _

_Snow and ice will engulf the land,_

_The Dread One shall walk the Earth once more."_

_

* * *

_

Toast felt the pull and yanked her line with a satisfied grin; seconds later a big fish, pale-skinned with delicate whiskers protruding from its snout, was thrashing in her hands. Toast delicately freed the animal from the hook, peered into its indignant yellow eyes for a second, and threw it back into the Yellowbreath's warm current. The day's catch had been plentiful; it would make little sense to waste the Stone's generosity.

"Nice catch."

"Yeah." Toast wasn't surprised to hear the elf's voice rise a short way behind her. Strangely, the attention was not completely unwelcome. The elven assassin was dangerous, and after spending months as a bodyguard skulking in Alistair's shadow, Toast could do with a little danger.

"Did you learn to fish on the surface? I didn't see many rivers in Orzammar. Well, apart from the lava."

"There are plenty of ponds and streams in the smaller caves around the city. Thought dwarves drank lava, perhaps?"

"To be honest, I figured dwarves survived exclusively on roasted nug and lichen ale. Indeed, it is a shame we did not get to explore much. Although we did get to visit Dusttown while running a little errand."

"Good for you."

"We even tangled a bit with the local carta. Surely you must have heard about the Warden's involvement? The story is quite famous, I would expect."

"Yup. As I said before: good for you."

"Anyway, those gangsters were quite fearsome, and their leader was quite the terror; she nearly took the Warden's life with a poisoned arrow. What was her name, already? Jernya?"

Toast groaned, but there was no shutting the elf up, and he launched into an embellished retelling of the Warden's adventures in the service of Prince Bhelen. The man was quite the storyteller, Toast thought, although he lacked the redhead's artistry. But then, by all accounts, Antivan Crows were more reputed for practicality than artistry. Still, the elf was smart, and knew how to knit truth and lie together. Well, good luck with that, Toast thought as she focused intently on her float.

"You know," Toast said after a few moments, "I don't really give a damn what you did in Dusttown. I left this life behind a long time ago."

"My dear, I am quite sure you do not concern yourself much about Dusttown." Zevran said lightly. Toast nodded. She _had_ been careless in the ruined thaig, talking about Dwarven history as though dusters knew anything but waddling in their own shit. Getting into a rage while fighting the darkspawn had probably _not_ helped either. But the past was the past.

"What ye getting at, duster?"

Zevran shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. "Not much, really. I just thought I would remind you that the Warden's involvement in dwarven politics was purely, hmm, circumstantial. I would hate to see anyone get hurt for a lost cause."

"A _cause_?" the dwarf laughed softly, but her dark eyes stayed trained on her float as she whispered back. "Aren't you the funny one? I will tell you this, assassin: if you think I would risk my neck to avenge old Harrowmont, you're not as smart as you think. I will say no more."

They remained silent for a minute, the elven assassin beaming with amusement at what was essentially a confirmation of his suspicions, the tiny dwarf peering intently at the roiling river water. From the corner of her eye, Toast caught a hint of movement in the back of the boat.

"I think your friend's waking up," she said casually, and Zevran had just the time to lift an eyebrow before the paralysis spell hit.

* * *

Nyx felt the surge of magic even as she slept, and the sensation brought her back from a vague dream of dark power into the choking heat of the underground channel. She ought to have shackled her from the start with the lyrium manacles brought from Orlais, Nyx thought as she tried to fight the spell. The same magic that kept her from moving also interfered with her ability to cast. Nyx wondered how the spell worked; if circumstances allowed it, she ought to ask Morrigan.

The witch had always been a fast thinker and a fast caster. Nyx had assumed that Morrigan's sickness and Flemeth's ring would reduce the threat; she had expected at least some warning signs before the witch attempted anything. Morrigan must have been conscious for a while, Nyx thought almost admiringly, and gathering her forces for… what? Revenge? A gallant last stand against forces she could not possibly defeat? Not likely. Morrigan believed only in survival, a result of Flemeth's oh-so convenient teachings. This was going to be _interesting_…

Nyx felt Leliana's fear and indignation flow through the Bond, and strove to send reassuring signals. Strangely, Nyx could not quite bring herself to fear the witch. Part of the reason may be arrogance, the old certainty that she could best any mage, no matter the circumstances. Part of it was that she trusted Flemeth's plan, at least as long as the old abomination's interests coincided with her own.

Cold hands on Nyx, and she slowly fell over the bench as Leliana's reassuring heat was taken away from her; Nyx could hear Morrigan's breath, coming shallow and ragged as she dragged the more athletic bard over to the bow.

The sound of bare feet treading on wood, circling all around Nyx, and magic suddenly drained from Nyx's body, like bleeding out in the space of seconds. _A glyph_, she guessed, banishing all mana within its boundaries. Obviously the witch had done a lot of research in the months leading to her finally snapping and hiding in the far recesses of the earth in animal form.

The paralysis spell dispelled even as the glyph formed, and Nyx opened her eyes and carefully sat up, mindful not to scare or provoke the witch. Morrigan sat at the bow, Leliana's jaw held tightly in her left hand, the bard's rigid body resting in her lap. One of Leliana's daggers was in her other hand, and the edge pressed tightly against the Orlesian's throat. Nyx felt the burn of familiar anger rise in her belly and breathed deep, struggling to suppress it.

"Violence will do you no good, Morrigan," Nyx said in a soothing tone, leaning forward as though to rise to her feet. Morrigan's golden eyes narrowed, and her emaciated hand clenched harder around the dagger's hilt. The witch breathed very fast, everything in her betrayed the rage and fear of a cornered animal, but her voice rose as steady and poised as ever.

"Stay within the glyph," Morrigan warned, and Nyx sat back obediently. "I see that the Chantry dancer still has you under her sway," Morrigan continued, "I do not need to tell you what will happen if I do not get satisfactory answers."

"But I _may_ need to tell you what will happen if you hurt Leliana," Nyx said softly.

"You assume that I value life higher than vengeance, Warden. A most dangerous assumption, considering the circumstances."

"Ask away, then."

"What have you done to me?"

"Done to you?" Nyx was genuinely surprised at the question. "_I_ have done nothing to you, Morrigan, except bring you back to your human form and heal you."

"Then why can I not shapeshift? Is it because of Mother's ring?"

Nyx shook her head. "I have no idea. The ring was supposed to act like a beacon for Flemeth, but maybe it has other properties."

"This is not the answer I sought, Warden," Morrigan said in a dangerously low voice. "What did Flemeth promise you? Why would you seek her aid after killing her?"

"What _could_ she offer me? She has knowledge I need. She promised to be my guide, to help me find a way to defeat Fen'Harel. It's a long story," Nyx added wearily, as a look of confusion passed over Morrigan's gaunt features.

"Then I suggest you make it short, for I _will_ kill your saintly pet if my magic runs out before you finish your tale."

"All you need to know is that I made a pact with Fen'Harel, and it didn't turn out well. Now I need to kill Him before He possesses me, and possibly devours the world on top of that. By the way, Leliana is the only thing that stands between me and Fen'Harel, so be careful with that dagger. You wouldn't like the _other_ me."

Morrigan shook her head scornfully. "A pretty tale, Warden, but I am not that naive. Do you expect me to believe… _Ah!_"

Morrigan cried out in pain, and Nyx felt the Veil pulse and groan as something reached from the Beyond; something powerful and glacial that coiled around the witch's mind like a python. Leliana felt it too, and her terror seeped through the Bond. Behind the bard, Morrigan's features shifted subtly, a change in expression more than structure, pride and ageless irony suddenly shining through the thin mask of skin.

"Oh, do not mind my Morrigan. Too much time spent as a spider always made her petulant, doesn't it, _child_?" A faint moan rose from Morrigan's lips, and Nyx shuddered at the despair it betrayed. "… Nothing that motherly love cannot cure, I am certain," Flemeth concluded with a barking laugh.

The paralysis spell dissipated; Nyx heard the soft hiss of Zevran's daggers being drawn, but she held her hand up in the air, signaling that the abomination was not to be harmed. Flemeth's hand had not left Leliana's neck, and a thin rivulet of blood ran where the blade had nicked soft skin. The bard was very pale, but Nyx could feel the tension building in her body, and in spite of the glyph a faint wisp of dark power escaped from Nyx.

"What now?" Nyx asked through dry lips.

"Now Flemeth shall grant you a wish, dearest pixie, in exchange for saving her wayward child. Isn't it the way of the old fairy tales? Help the old lady, reap your just reward. Such edifying tales, aren't they?"

"Let go of Leliana. _Now_."

Morrigan's attack had hardly upset Nyx, but Flemeth's presence was a different thing altogether. It terrified and fascinated her, an overpowering feeling that was almost religious in quality, almost akin to the Dread God's menace. As was often the case, Nyx's fear was accompanied by broiling anger, and she saw the bard's blue eyes widen in recognition as she drew on dark power. Flemeth felt it, too, and released her hold on Leliana with a satisfied grin, as though _she_ had been waiting for proof of Nyx's story.

"Certainly," the abomination chuckled, "Old Flemeth would never get in the way of lovers. She understood the folly of such things, better than you do, perhaps. But let me get to the point: my daughter is quite willful, and I shall not linger overlong. What you seek lies under elven ruins south of Solas in the Silent Plains. The locals used to call the place the Dead Columns. You will have little time to get there, I am afraid, and you should expect to find the place held by your enemies."

"Very encouraging," Nyx groaned. "And once we're there? What am I supposed to do?"

Flemeth smiled brightly.

"You will figure it out. You are a Grey Warden, after all." Flemeth's face started twitching, and a string of pained moans escaped her lips as she fell to her knees. "but never fear," she said in a voice that varied wildly in timbre and volume, "We shall keep an eye on your progress… shall we not, _daughter_?"

The witch's eyes gleamed with cold hatred as she rose and faced Nyx and Leliana.

"Yes, Mother, we shall," Morrigan said.

* * *

A.N.: I am assuming that barring proper rituals, Flemeth's possession is a gradual process.


	31. Chapter 31: Riding on dead seas

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Riding the dead seas**

* * *

So… Life's been busy. Thanks for bearing with me!

… Bringing in a short flashback here. I really don't want to burden the story too much, but... Darn, since my characters are in the Deep Roads, we may as well get some of that missing background. Let me know if it does burden the story though.

* * *

"So ye're leaving, huh?"

Leliana was almost at the gates of Orzammar when the familiar voice erupted behind her, closely followed by a cloud of ethylic fumes. Spinning around, she eyed Oghren coldly. Of all her companions, she thought, the Warden _had_ to send the drunkard to try and dissuade her from leaving. Well, that showed how much the little… _maleficar_… cared.

"Yes, I am leaving. Good bye, Oghren."

Oghren didn't look overly fazed by her glacial tone; if anything, there was a gleam of amusement in the beady, blood-shot eyes.

"_Good_. I mean, no offence intended, but bard or not, you don't really have what it takes to fight darkspawn. You'll do much more good sitting on yer ass in one of them human temples."

Leliana felt deep, crimson heat crawl onto her face.

"Why, thank you so much, Oghren. I am certainly glad for the advice of one who has done so well for himself and his family," Leliana purred. She hit a nerve, and the dwarf's braided moustache drooped a little. But instead of exploding into a torrent of invectives, Oghren sighed heavily. Maker, please don't let the drunkard start to cry. _That_ would he the last drop in a thoroughly miserable week.

"Perhaps ye're right," Oghren said, "Stone knows, I'm no role model for little blighters. But I know a few things about screwing up, and that's where you're headed."

Leliana shook her head sadly. The dwarf was trying to help, in a clumsy, irritating kind of way.

"I can't stay, Oghren. I just… can't. Not after what _she_ did. This business with Branka… That was…"

_Evil_. Leliana was not used to associating the word with the Grey Wardens, with the tales of high feats and heroism. Leliana was no child; as much as she loved the old tales, she was not naive enough to expect real life to conform to such fantasies. But what the sorceress had done, what she had allowed to pass in the Anvil's volcanic shrine went against everything Leliana held sacred.

The worst was the feeling of betrayal, of being so profoundly wrong about the Warden. Unlike Wynne, Leliana had never attempted to mold the younger elf into an idealized Grey Warden. While Wynne's efforts had nearly gotten her thrown into a darkspawn filth pit, Leliana and Nyx had grown closer in the Deep Roads. The elf could be humorous and disarmingly naive, almost childlike at times, and Leliana had grown fond of her ravenous appetite for tales. She had done her best to comfort Nyx when they had discovered the broodmother and the elf had retired into sullen shock for hours. Maker, she had thought they were _friends_, and the blighted little mage had gone and shattered it all in one fell swoop.

_Orzammar needs the golems, and we need Orzammar. This is my decision._

Leliana thought she would never forget Caridin screaming as his steel carapace melted and fizzled, revealing blackened, brittle bones inside. And it was nothing compared to the way Hespith's demented whispers haunted her dreams.

Oghren snorted, and Leliana snapped back to reality.

"_Branka_? Branka's mad as a nug in a pot, but the Warden ain't done this for Branka. Look, can I show you something before you go?"

What was the point, Leliana thought. Every minute she spent underground reminded her of betrayal going unpunished.

"Oghren," she whispered menacingly, "If this is a trick to lure me into a dark corner, spare yourself the time _and_ the broken thumbs."

"I like how you think, human. I promise I'll be nice, just this once."

"_Fine_."

They passed through the Common's bronze doors, Oghren leading the way through the labyrinth of bazaars and street stalls that were the true heart of the city. Even in her sulking mood, Leliana could not help immersing herself in the sights, the smells and the sounds of Dwarven life, both familiar and strangely exotic. In many ways, this last bastion of the Dwarven nation felt more alive than most cities Leliana had visited; perhaps, she thought, because so many people were crammed in such a small area. It was exciting, and quite overwhelming, and as before, there was something a faint, nagging feeling that something was not quite right, although Leliana could not quite pinpoint what it was.

They kept walking for what seemed like hours, treading innumerable stairways and countless alleys, and Leliana started to suspect that her short companion intended to simply bore her to death. Either that, or his booze-soaked brains had already forgotten what he had set out to do. The dwarf simply went on and on, seemingly lost in thoughts.

Just as Leliana was about to attempt shake Oghren's out of his reverie, the dwarf stopped on a terrace overlooking the Commons, just below the high walls of the Diamond Quarters. Despite her foul mood, Leliana had to admit that the sight was breathtaking, and she spent a few seconds taking in the sprawling city at her feet, the sparkling lava, the loud hum from the crowd and the forges. And still, this faint feeling that something was not right…

Oghren turned to Leliana, and she was surprised at his intense, almost painful expression.

"Quiz time. We've been walking up and down this sodding city for a while, right?"

"My feet couldn't agree more."

"Okay, here's the question: how many dwarven kids have we met?"

* * *

"What are you thinking about?"

This section of the underground river was pitch dark, but the faint glow of Toast's lyrium lantern was enough for Leliana to make out the serpentine black lines on her lover's face. During the days of their downstream travel, the river's water had lost most of its heat, but the humidity remained. The lovers sat huddled together at the aft, enveloped in Leliana's travel cape. Leliana could feel Nyx's curiosity like a faint, scratching sensation in the back of her mind, and she supposed that the elf was just as attuned to her sensations, if not more.

"I was thinking of Orzammar. Of Hespith and Branka. They are still there, somewhere amongst all this darkness…"

"You haven't quite forgiven me that one, huh?"

Leliana sighed. "It's… complicated," she said reluctantly. "I understand your choice, even though I still think you were wrong. It isn't really my place to judge, anyway. And it wasn't all that fair that you had to take that decision."

"Damn right it wasn't. Before Duncan set me free, I didn't even get to choose my socks. It's funny, though... When I look back it seems like it's been ages and… I don't see things quite the same way."

Leliana raised an eyebrow. "Are you having regrets?" she asked softly.

Nyx chuckled. "Regrets? You're mistaking me for some _other_ Grey Warden, my bard. No, I'd do it all over again. Those golems worked wonders in the assault on Denerim anyway. Still, I've changed a little. You know."

"Ever the eloquent one," Leliana whispered in gentle mockery, and the elf's face reddened just like she knew it would.

"_Ugh_. Could you both cut the drooling for a minute?"

Leliana clenched her teeth. She had thought Morrigan asleep, but had obviously been mistaken. Then again, between Fen'Harel and Flemeth, the witch _had_ pretty solid reasons to stay away from the Fade. But Maker, being stuck on a boat with the witch was irritating…

"What do you want, Morrigan?" Nyx asked coldly. Leliana could feel the tension in her lover's body, and something else: she could feel a faint burn in her own veins, the buildup of magic that was Nyx's instinctive response to any perceived threat. Whatever her plans were, Morrigan would not catch the Warden unawares a second time.

"What I _want, _is to see you and Mother burn. Slowly. But for now, I have to content myself with relaying her directions. We are about to reach a lake, or a sea of sorts. Mother recommends we leave the boat urgently and find some other path North."

"Flemeth told you this?"

Morrigan shrugged. "If you do not believe me, then I suggest you step into the Fade and ask her yourself. No doubt Mother will be grateful for the company."

"Tempting, but I'll pass. I'm fed up with this boat anyway."

"Me too," Leliana added, "And I never want to eat sulfur-scented fish broth again, no offence intended to the cook."

"Three days on deep mushrooms, and you'll all be crying for fish broth," Toast chimed in with the faintest hint of a smile. The dwarf's gruff behavior had somewhat mellowed since the darkspawn fight. Either the companions had earned Toast's respect, Nyx thought, or Zevran's courtship was actually eroding her defenses.

"I don't know," Zevran said, "the smell sort of reminds me of Antiva's infamous floating market... It's in the middle of a sewer," he added as the others stared at him blankly.

"Do you have _any_ memories of Antiva that do not involve the stench of latrines?" Nyx asked, wrinkling her nose in mock disgust. "Rhetorical question," she added precipitously as a huge grin dawned on Zevran's features.

"Well, that's one big lake," Toast commented from the bow.

_Big_, Leliana thought, was the understatement of the age. The tunnel around them opened up as the Yellowbreath lost itself into what appeared to be an infinite expanse of still, vaguely phosphorescent liquid. The companions felt silent, cranking their necks in an attempt to glimpse the ceiling, but there was no ceiling to be seen; only inky darkness that seemed to congeal a few feet above the milky surface of the lake. Here and there, Leliana could vaguely glimpse the shadowy shapes of great stalactites – or were they towers, she wondered, the last vestiges of long-sunken dwarven kingdom.

No, not _dwarven_, she thought. This underground lake – ocean, whatever it was- was too deep, too far under the surface. Leliana thought of the silent crypts of her visions, filled with the dead, inhuman shapes of the Ancestors. She shuddered as the boat broke the calm surface of the lake and cool, damp air wrapped around her like a wet towel.

Nyx let out a low hiss; her voice sounded almost sacrilegious in the thick silence.

"Well, Zev, be happy. It stinks in here, too."

It _did_ stink, Leliana realized; the smell was faintly reminiscent of rancid meats and musty cellars – or _dungeons_, she thought, and old pain wormed its way along the healed cracks of her bones, making her feel dizzy. Nyx's hand on her shoulder squeezed gently, and Leliana smiled meekly, feeling ashamed of her weakness, yet almost resentful of Nyx's solicitude. The thought brought more shame, and disturbing visions of old age and crippled limbs, warped by arthritis.

"I think I could have done without this particular smell," Zevran said slowly, and his voice lacked its usual bravado. The pale light from the water reflected dully on the antivan's face, turning his pleasant features into something altogether unpleasant.

_Dead._

"Ugh. I don't like this place. Let's find a place to land," Nyx said. Leliana pointedly avoided looking in her lover's direction, because she was afraid of what she might see on Nyx's face.

_Dead face._

"Agreed," Toast groaned, "let's try and follow the wall to the right."

Toast and Zevran pushed on the oars, and Leliana cringed a little at the ripples they created on the even surface of the sky – _of_ _the lake_, she reminded herself. They were paddling on a lake, and the black expanse above was not the ground. Still, the boat hardly seemed to move at all, reinforcing her feeling of being stuck out of time.

Leliana couldn't say for how long they rowed on the silent lake, but it must have been hours. They kept searching for landings and tunnels where there were none; and Toast and Zevran's movements gradually slowed down. Even the ripples from the oars didn't travel very far, it seemed; they moved listlessly and died a few feet away from the boat, as though ashamed to disturb the dead lake's rest. In the end, Leliana understood, all their struggles would be in vain. The lake had been here since times immemorial, and the lake demanded quiet.

_Dead quiet._

"Stone and pebbles, elf, wake up already!"

Toast's angry outburst disturbed Leliana's reverie, and she groggily opened her eyes to see an absurdly pale Zevran collapse onto the rowing bench, the oar slipping from his numb fingers. Morrigan was curled at the aft, her yellow eyes glazed as she struggled to stay awake – _to stay_ _alive?_ Then Nyx entered the bard's field of vision, and Leliana drunkenly reflected that death, finally, suited the elf; her pallor was almost preternaturally beautiful in the dead glow. Her silver eyes, too, glinted fiercely, and Leliana faintly thought that they would make a fine prize for the fish. Something was wrong...

Nyx slapped her, hard, the sound like little thunderclaps in the sacred silence, but the blows were devoid of any sting. Gently swatting the elf's hands away, Leliana moved towards the railing. Poor, dear little Nyx, she thought fondly; the elf had tried to help, and Leliana was grateful for it, but now it was time to go.

_Time to sink._

There were friends under the milky surface of the lake; waiting with outstretched hands and knowing smiles. Leliana knew this, because the surface swelled ever so slightly when she leaned over the railing. She thought she caught a glimpse of rich, dark hair, and she wondered if Marjolaine was waiting there, too.

"Leliana, no! Holy sodding Maker, what are you thinking?"

Leliana's arms rebelled and pushed her away from the railing; her legs willfully buckled under her, and she found herself sitting rigid under Nyx's furious glare. It wasn't fair of the sorceress to use their bond, she thought, tears welling up in her blue eyes; how could she use blood magic on her. Worse, it was unfair to deprive her of a well-earned rest. Anger and sadness fought for a moment in the bard's addled brains, until she realized that none of those emotions belonged to her. The anger, as usual, came from Nyx, the familiar stream of darkness that burned and sustained; but the sadness…

The sadness came from _below_, and Leliana sprang to her feet with a little cry of disgust, as though she could somehow put more distance between her and what lay beneath the thin wooden hull.

Toast shouted something, and a look of alarm passed on Nyx's face. The sorceress rose to her feet, snarling, and before Leliana could protest the pang of Nyx's pain jolted her. Then the dark power kicked in, washing away the last remains of her torpor, sending shivers down Leliana's spine. She drew her daggers in a fluid motion, her body craving a fight; she watched her lover's wrath, and she wished the moment would never end.

Tendrils of bloody mist unfolded, flailing the water in search of the fool that dared attack the Wolf Born. They found their prize, and Leliana felt Nyx's ruthless mirth as the elf's tiny fist closed abruptly and rose, _pulling_. Ten feet from the bow, the lake's surface erupted in a maelstrom of dirty, bloody water; something writhed in agony as it was dragged from the depth, something huge, black and foul. It hissed in terror and anger and it stank like a mass grave, and it was nothing more than a swarm of black, snake-like bodies.

"Snakes?" Leliana whispered incredulously.

"Eels. Plus some kind of demon. Those guys aren't too picky about the bodies they possess," the sorceress said, her silver eyes trained on the writhing mass that was still struggling to escape, "and this one needs a lot of wriggling space, don't you, demon?"

A thousand tiny fanged mouths hissed angrily, and the sound made Leliana's teeth ache.

_Leave ussshhh alone, mortal! We order you…_

Nyx's grin widened in a predator's snarl.

"You don't know who you're talking to, demon. Morrigan?"

"My pleasure," the witch replied, leaning over the railway and dipping the tip of her fingers into the water. The smell of ozone filled Leliana's nostrils, and the writhing mass erupted into a cacophony of hissing and bleating.

_We implore you, radiant one. Let usssh go. We wisssht you no harm._

"A remarkable creature indeed," Morrigan said dreamily. The witch had risen from her defensive posture by the aft and looked at the captive demon curiously. "It must be the reason Flemeth advised against lingering on the lake. It may have its uses, however."

"Remarkable?" Toast looked up from tending to a bleeding bump on Zevran's head. "It's bloody disgusting, you mean. I say make fish balls out of the blighter."

"Then perhaps you should stick to cooking, dwarf," Morrigan snapped. "_This_ is a matter for thinking people."

_Lissshen to the pretty one,_ the demon hissed hopefully.

"Andraste's flaming ass, will you all _shut up_?" Nyx groaned. The writhing mass of eels hissed sharply as the elf clenched her fist harder.

_Mersssshy… We never wissshesst to offend the Radiant Ones. Can we offer our asshisssshh… asshhh… help?_

The frown on Nyx's face turned into an impish grin.

"You know," she said softly, "I think you could."

* * *

"Your Supreme Holiness, we have arrived."

Diane shook off her half-slumber and rose groggily, pausing briefly to put on her travel furs. It was strange, to emerge into the supposedly hot desert and find oneself engulfed in howling cold. Then again, with Thedas going to the Void, the weather was the least of her concerns. The Dread Wolf's power made itself felt in many ways, all of them threatening; soon, this place would be the eye of the storm.

Stepping onto the chariot's raised platform, Diane surveyed the changes her Templars had made to the place. The broken columns and crumbling walls, dating back to before the Fall of Arlathan, still jutted out from the reddish soil like the broken fangs of some monstrous beast, but the Templars had dug trenches and erected walls of earth and rubble around the place, turning it into a fort of sorts. The camp itself was laid out in a square grid that harkened back to the Tevinter legions, for the Chantry's military arm had borrowed much from their ancient foe. Everything spoke of cold, ruthless efficiency; even the pervasive desert dust was kept at bay by the Templars' patient toil, and the bronze of the Maker's sun emblems shone dutifully in the bleak light.

Diane nodded approvingly. The fortifications may not stop a well-organized army for very long, but they should be enough to buy her time in the struggle that must come. Thanks to the spirits grafted onto her body, Diane felt the presence of her brethren, the proud bearers of the Maker's Light. Nearly one in ten Templars in the camp was a Light Bearer, and it was the strength of their unwavering faith, more than walls or weapons, that would keep evil at bay.

Evil… Diane could feel its pull now, like a gentle but insistent tug on the back of her skull, urging her to move deeper into the heart of the camp, towards the broken gates and the crumbling access to the vast catacombs beneath. She remembered being here before, a younger woman, carried by an inextinguishable faith that refused any and all compromise. Long ago, Diane had trodden the paths of the dead ones, and she had seen what lay hidden beneath, and she had known, without a doubt, that the Maker truly had left this world. The catacombs had changed Diane, even more surely than the rapid passing of the following years. The only thing that had remained constant was her faith, her steely resolution to find a cure for the world's aches.

Well, she would pay the catacombs a visit, but not right now. There was much to be done; she had to review the minutiae of her battle plans, discuss with the Templar leaders, arrange the thousand details that were part of the acting Divine's charge. More importantly, she had to lead her Templars and secret brethren into prayer, a task she truly looked forward to.

There were two visitors waiting for Diane in her quarters, a labyrinthine, richly adorned complex of fabric and tapestries that really couldn't be called a pavilion. The fist visitor she was glad to see; but the other… not so much so.

The visitors bowed deeply at her entrance, and Diane curtly nodded at the new Umbra, the emissary from the Minrathous order, whose particular talents would be necessary to accomplish what must be done. Then, and only then, Diane turned to the Conclave's envoy.

"You Supreme Holiness…" The older cleric's name was Mother Galatea, and for all the affected respect in her voice, her expression betrayed what she thought of the breach of protocol. Diane felt only spite for the likes of Galatea: bootlickers who thrived on corruption and status quo; steadfast pillars of the Andrastian Chantry who would never, ever stick lift a finger to bring the Maker back. Diane had risen through the ranks by stomping on them.

"_My child_?"

Galatea stopped a second to assess the title's propriety, remembered whom she was talking to, and stoically pursued her mission.

"Your Supreme Holiness, the Conclave humbly requires the acting Divine's presence for the Election, which, due to exceptional circumstances well known to Your Supreme Holiness, will be held in the neutral city of Starkhaven in the Free Marches. The Election," Galatea continued with a coy look from under heavy eyelids, "shall take place as soon as Your Supreme Holiness thinks it appropriate to assist."

Smiling, Diane calmly pressed the fingers of her hands together, stretching the joints with a faint popping sound. It had not taken long for the tepid and the corrupt to start fomenting their little revolution; there was no doubt that Celene's vast wealth and the prevalence of Orlesian bloodlines in the Chantry were playing against her. Closing her eyes briefly, Diane allowed herself half a minute to think. There were Light Bearer agents in the entourage of most Grand Clerics, and Diane was sorely tempted to give orders to have all dissent removed. But why bother? The day of reckoning was almost at hand. Let the wicked fool themselves with the illusions of power.

"Thank you, Child. We shall inform the Conclave when we see fit to attend."

The envoy licked her lips in a nervous gesture.

"Ah…" Galatea started, her nervousness almost making her stutter, and Diane felt the urge to strike that pale, wet mouth; "Your Supreme Holiness, the Conclave expressed their wish to, hum, deal with the matter with the utmost urgency… When, ah, may I be so bold as to ask when Your Supreme Holiness would deign to attend?"

"You may not." _To the Void with politics, _Diane thought. She had spent her life doing politics, and she had hated every minute of it. Her voice rose, harsh and powerful, thrumming with the power of enslaved spirits, and the Light Bearers of her honor guard reached for their sword hilts. "Tell the Conclave this: the Acting Divine considers that her duty lies with the protection of our Holy Chantry, which at the moment means that the Exalted March takes precedence. When Divine Marguerite's murderers are brought to justice, _then_ the Conclave shall meet, and a True Divine shall be chosen. We have spoken."

Galatea was smart enough to hang her head very low and offer all exterior signs of the utmost repentance. Diane expected no less.

"Please forgive my impertinence, Your Supreme Holiness. I am but a humble sinner in your presence."

Diane nodded, a wry smile on her thin lips. She was pretty sure that Galatea had pissed herself under the heavy brown robes.

"That you are, Child. But it is not my place to forgive you."

* * *

"So, what do you think?"

"I don't know… Are you certain you have this thing under control?"

Nyx laughed. She was seated by the bow, and the lake's glow lent her an almost supernatural pallor. Her raven hair flew wildly; she was a vision of insanity, but one that was not without beauty. Behind the elf, the bow seemed to hardly touch the water as the demon propelled the boat at breakneck speed. Further by the aft, Zevran started singing, an Antivan song that Leliana vaguely understood was about red wine and a mustachioed girl, and she was surprised to hear Toast hum along. Even Morrigan seemed less sour than usual, perhaps because she got to taunt the demon and prick it with bolts of lightning whenever it slowed down.

"I assume it will try to betray us. But demons are one-trick ponies, and this one seems dumb enough. Come on; don't tell me you're not enjoying this?"

Leliana grinned. "I never said I didn't. It is not really the kind of romantic boat ride I was hoping for, but it is an… adventure… Wow!" she exclaimed as the boat very nearly skimmed past a towering pillar.

"Yup. Adventure at last!" Nyx shouted excitedly; Leliana thought that she looked like a child at the fair. "And now for the best part: Toast thinks we're actually under the Waking Sea. At this speed, we'll be in Nevarra in no time at all; two days at most."

Leliana's eyes widened at the thought of the tremendous mass of water that literally hung above her head.

"How is that even possible?"

Nyx shrugged. "How should I know? It's not magic. Maybe we'll ask the demon later."

"Do you really think it will answer our questions?"

"It damn well had better. Or we'll have fried eel for dinner."


	32. Chapter 32: Out in the cold

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Out in the cold**

* * *

_So, busy life and some kind of author's block are conspiring to make my updates extremely slow. I expect this sort of trouble to last for a while, unfortunately. Thanks for bearing with me.**  
**_

_Well, here's to hoping you don't like tomatoes…_

* * *

In the end, they let the demon live, in a matter of speaking. The thing had grown remarkably familiar, telling chilling tales of sunken cities that predated even the oldest dwarven thaigs and artless lies of lost dwarves which it had "helped reach a higher level of conscshhhh… made happy." Not to mention the bombastic offers of "power unlimited and richessshh beyond counting", which were sure to elicit a chuckle or two from Nyx.

So when the boat reached the northern shores of the strange underground sea, Nyx was in a relatively lenient mood, and ready to let the swarming creature go back to whatever it was it did, all alone in its over-sized pond. Morrigan – or Flemeth? - however, had a different idea, and after a short incantation and a display of ice magic that had secretly impressed Nyx, the witch had left the shore with a ghoulish – and very unhappy- amulet in the shape of a coiled eel, while the rest of the demon's swarming body floated away in a frozen mass.

Nyx had expected Morrigan to show obvious signs of Flemeth "settling in", but she was surprised to notice very little such signs, save for the occasional whimpering during her rare moments of sleep and some unnaturally strong bursts of magic. The observation was both a relief – Nyx did not exactly relish watching the process – and, increasingly, a concern, for Flemeth's restraint hinted at more complex motivations than simple survival. What those motivations were, Nyx had no idea yet, but she wouldn't put revenge past the ancient abomination. Being shred to ribbons by darkspawn just _might_ lead to hard feelings.

Needless to say, Nyx and Leliana slept by turns, and watched each other's back with the practiced efficiency of old comrades-in-arms who doubled as lovers. As the days passed and the companions inched their way North along dusty tunnels, the bond between Nnyx and Leliana seemed to strengthen, leading to awkward and wonderful moments when the elven sorceress would start a sentence only to have Leliana finish it. And the bard's hold on the gods' power was growing, too, although Nyx could feel her reluctance to call upon it. Where they were headed, Nyx had no idea, but she suspected that by the end of the road, the term "human" would only apply very loosely to Leliana.

Well, that, or they would both be dead.

* * *

_Dirthamen falls._

_There has never been much love between the scions of Elgar'Nan, for they grew up in the shadow of the king, raised only to give the best of themselves in the service of the All-Father. It was a cold house, ruled not by the weak tenets of affections, but by the complex rules of blood, duty and protocol. Andruil will not weep in the manner of mortals; her rage at seeing her brother torn apart by the blade-like arms of the Trespassers stems at least as much from the outrage that is done to her blood as from any incidental affection._

_Falon'Din, however, is another matter. The bond between the twins always was a mystery, even to their mother, wise Mythal, well-versed in the arts of magic. Elgar'Nan used to jest that he had sired one son, inadvertently split in twain at birth, and there may have been some truth to his scornful ramblings. What was between the brothers transcended duty; Andruil thinks it may be comparable to what the Dread Wolf stirs in her; need, loyalty and something more. The Lady of the Hunt feels a pang of fear and hastily scans the battlefield for her King and husband, sighing in relief as she glimpses a vast, shadowy form ripping apart a Trespasser._

_The god of Death and Guardian of Uthenera rushes to the aid of his brother, too late for anything but vengeance, for Dirthamen's essence is gone already, absorbed in the writhing mass of his murderers. Falon'Din's charge cuts short the buzzing things' triumph, and Andruil lends assistance from afar, harassing the creatures with arrows of cold light._

_The battle is fought in the smoldering ruins of a wyrmling city, the capital of one of their inconsequential kingdoms, and, Andruil remembers somberly, it has started under bad auspices. For as battles succeed to battles, a series of successful skirmishes that have brought no lasting peace, the Dread Wolf has grown impatient, all but emptying Arlathan and massacring always more humans, spilling ever more blood to sunder the Veil and lure out his enemies._

_Today, on the order of their god king, the elves have broken the rules of the Hunt and slaughtered the young and old alike, leaving none alive. Maybe Fen'Harel is right, and the gods should not concern themselves with the old rules anymore. But maybe there was wisdom to the old rules. The torrents of blood have unleashed an unprecedented assault from the Trespassers, and for the first time since the fall of the Ancestors, a god has fallen in battle._

_The Trespassers regroup and encircle Falon'Din, looking to take advantage of the young god's anger. Barbed mandibles snap, scythe-like claws reach with horrible avidity. Then the ground shakes as the Dread Wolf rushes the attackers, crushing their metallic carapaces in savage assault, scattering his foes like toys. Mercury-like fluids splash onto black fur; swirling essence is absorbed into the Wolf's dark mass._

_Falon'Din covers his face as the fangs of terror hover before him, dribbling with the Trespassers' infernal substance. For an instant, Andruil fears she will lose another brother, this time to her husband-king bloodlust. Then the Dread Maw turns away; in one elegant leap, Fen'Harel joins the last of the fight in the ruins of a palace where Mythal and June have ensnared a thrashing Trespasser._

_Seconds later, it is over._

_The Dread Wolf's victorious howl echoes through the battlefield, and Falon'Din's gaze slowly rises from the scattered remains of his twin. The gods have no word for what Andruil sees in her brother's eyes, but Leliana knows madness and hatred all too well._

* * *

They stumbled upon the remains a few hours after Leliana woke sick and trembling from the vision.

They noticed the smell first, a fetid exhalation that mixed carrion with the more deeply unsettling stench of the taint. They moved forward with the utmost caution, even though neither Nyx nor Leliana could feel any sign of live darkspawn in the vicinity.

They found the hive after hours of careful progression; Leliana refused to enter the broodmother's lair, but Nyx's curiosity was stronger than her common sense. She led Toast into the nest, striving to, but not quite succeeding in steering clear of the rotting flesh and mucus. The stench of decay was nearly overpowering. Nyx slipped once, and as she struggled to keep her balance her right hand shot right through one of the gelatinous growths that covered the walls. Rotten little things cascaded onto the ground, as though someone had spilled a crate of overripe tomatoes, and it was all the sorceress could do not to spill the contents of her stomach. Grinding her teeth, Nyx led on, towards the center of the stench and the heart of the nest.

The broodmother and most of the hive were still in there, but they were nowhere as threatening as in Nyx's souvenir. That, she thought, had a lot to do with them being torn to shreds, so that the nest looked like a tornado had gutted the world's filthiest butcher's shop. The stench was overpowering.

"Think Grey Wardens did that?" Toast asked in a muffled voice. The dwarf's face was a shade paler than usual, and she was breathing sparingly.

Nyx shook her head pensively and walked to where the broodmother's head lay severed from the massive frame and torn tentacles. Something had caught her sight: a glitter of metal in the faint light of Toast's lantern. Something was caught between the mess of bony protuberances that may have been teeth. Shuddering with disgust, Nyx pulled the object free and held it to the light.

"What's this? Some kind of knife?"

Nyx shook her head. She wasn't sure, but it reminded her of…

The object moved, twisting feebly in her fingers, and she let go with a yelp of disgust. Toast stared blankly at the silver claw wriggling in the filth.

"We must go. Find a passage to the surface. Andraste's tits, the tunnels North must be full of them," Nyx whispered. The sorceress could feel _them_ now, if she closed her eyes and paid attention. Unlike darkspawn, their presence did not feel threatening; if anything it was oddly soothing. _They_ didn't mean her any harm, at least not until their master decided that the prodigal child was more trouble than she was worth.

"Them whom? Or them what?"

Nyx had met one of Fen'Harel's vanguards before, and the creature had fought at Leliana's side to free her. She had felt their presence in the Orlesian countryside, distant echoes of a quiet song, furtive shadows that frayed the Veil and bred in the dark hollows of the hills. The beings had been on the move then, and she had not known where; nor had she truly known them.

Now Nyx saw. Mental images of what had happened here fleeted through her mind, and friendly calls resounded from the tunnels far ahead.

The Devoured had no quarrel with the darkspawn, that inconsequential result of men's hubris: the hive had simply stood in the tide's way. The Devoured only wished to answer the God's call, and the Deep Roads offered a quick, sheltered path towards their destination. Nyx could almost see their distant shapes in her mind's eye. Each of them, she understood, was a thin bridge to the Beyond, a tiny prick hole in the Veil. They were moving, converging onto some point further North. This… meant something, but Nyx couldn't quite understand it, not while their voices called to her.

Something pressed gently inside the back of her head, and Nyx staggered. They were gentle, the Devoured; their wrath was reserved for the unenlightened and the defiant. Nyx was special to them, just as she was special in the eyes of the Master. Through miles of stone and filth, Nyx could feel them react to her scrutiny. She knew, she felt that thousands of loving, silver eyes, neither living nor dead, were now trained in her direction. They welcomed the Wolf Born with their chant, and she felt her blood stir in longing.

_You know who we are: the Devoured, those dreamers whom the Master found and embraced as his own. We have tasted death, and through the Dread Maw we were reborn. Just like you, Wolf Born. You know us as kin and clan. _

_Lead us. _

**No. **

Leliana's voice cut through the murmurs like a blade, breaking the spell. Nyx found herself staring at a puzzled-looking Toast. She forced herself to fake a smile, which apparently did not reassure the dwarf overmuch.

"I'm not sure what they are," Nyx lied through dry lips, "and I don't really want to find out. Let's get out of here."

Leliana was waiting for her at the entrance of the nest, pale, but very calm in spite of the surrounding rot and stench, and Nyx wondered at the human who could dismiss a god. The bard smiled, and Nyx slipped her right hand into hers; the Devoured's distant murmur stopped for good. Leliana's eyebrow arched in mute questioning, and Nyx dragged her a short distance apart from the others.

"You remember the thing from the Redoute? The one that helped us fight the Templars?" Nyx asked with a little grimace, and Leliana frowned at the recollection. "Well, I think there's a whole army of them in the tunnels ahead. We need to get to the surface."

"And if they are _also_ on the surface?"

Nyx shrugged, trying to look less shaken than she actually felt. "Then we'll see. It's not like we have a lot of options. Oh, and I think I'll need to stay within shouting distance in the future," the sorceress added in a very low murmur.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Leliana replied, and despite her worries, the sorceress had to grin.

* * *

It took the companions five days of hesitating and traipsing through musty tunnels before they finally emerged into the open, blinking and stumbling in the grayish afternoon light.

Zevran had passable knowledge of Nevarran geography, having done a few jobs here, and he deftly climbed a jumble of nearby boulders, spyglass in hand, in order to try and determine their position. Toast, Nyx and Leliana sat on yellowed grass to eat the last of a small deepstalker they had caught the day before, while Morrigan took her share of meat and sat at a short distance. It was a cold, bleak meal on a cold, bleak day, but in Leliana's eyes, the pale disk showing through the low winter clouds was as radiant as the Grand Cathedral's golden dome had ever been, and she laughed in delight.

"You all right?" Toast asked suspiciously, as though irked by the display of happiness. In stark contrast to her other companions' relief, Toast was crabbier than ever, shading her brown eyes from the weak light, frowning and generally looking depressed.

"Hmm. It's a surfacer's thing," Leliana explained, affectionately brushing the dwarf's shoulder pad and pointedly ignoring her scowl. "Don't get me wrong, the Deep Roads are truly majestic, but I did miss the sun."

"At least, what passes for the sun these days," Nyx sighed. The sorceress had declined her portion of stringy meat and was desperately attempting to keep the wind out of her filthy, tattered collar, no doubt bemoaning the loss of yet another set of leather armor. Leliana tried not to think of how thin and pale the elf looked.

"Well, it _could_ be worse. Just think of the Tower of Magi," Leliana said with forced cheerfullness. The elf groaned and huddled closer to her, seeking warmth.

"Yeah. Now we can all happily freeze to death. Pardon me if I hide my joy," Toast grumbled.

Leliana tried to imagine what if must feel for dwarves to leave the Stone. She remembered Oghren joking about falling into the sky, and the vertigo that open spaces gave him. But then, Oghren's exile had been voluntary, a chance at a new life far from his failures. Whatever had led Toast to exile, her circumstances must have been even less pleasant, and Leliana knew that the dwarf must have worked very hard to earn Louis's trust. Even Toast's name was a bitter joke and a challenge to the outside world.

"Thank you for leading us this far," Leliana simply said. Toast's scowl didn't disappear, but she nodded lightly to acknowledge the courtesy.

"I live to serve, M'Lady," Toast said with a hint of irony.

Zevran's soft-soled shoes impacted the grassy floor with an almost imperceptible thud. Seconds later, he sat down before his portion of cold _tezpadam_, grinning as though he had just won the Antivan Toothy Smile Championship. "Ah, ribs," he exclaimed happily, "Excellent! Although I really wish we had some spices to go with the meat. I know a little tavern in Cumberland…"

"So..?" Nyx interrupted.

"So, that tavern serves a gorgeous rabbit in mustard sauce. Although truly Cumberland is home to more rats than rabbits, go figure…"

"Zev…" Leliana said warningly. The Antivan smirked, bit into his meat and took a few seconds to savor the musky taste before answering the question.

"So, my friends, I am proud to announce that I know where we are. We are, or should be, a short way North and West of Cumberland, and I think we aren't too far from the old Highway."

Nyx looked a little less cold-stricken at the news, and even Toast raised a hopeful eyebrow, but Zevran tut-tutted in warning.

"There is a little problem, however," he said after taking another bite and rinsing it down with a swig of water. "Technically, we should be in Nevarra, but the border with Orlais appears to have moved East. There is smoke rising from Cumberland's direction, and movements of troops along the Highway."

"War," Nyx murmured, and Leliana felt her stomach knot. Zevran nodded.

"War, yes, but not quite what we would have expected. If Orlais had been invaded, we would be well beyond the front lines. As it is… Well, traveling under these circumstances may become _interesting_."

"Attack is the best defense. Celene's one tough blighter," Toast said approvingly, and despite the gravity of the situation Leliana had to smile at the dwarf's irreverence.

"Zev, could you see if the way North is blocked?" Nyx asked thoughtfully.

"I used a spyglass, carissima, not a magic mirror. But maybe you could turn into a bird and do a little reconnaissance."

Nyx considered the idea for a minute and rose, absently dusting her dirty clothing.

"Are you sure?" Leliana asked softly, and the sorceress shrugged.

"Nope. But I'll try to stay close. Unless Flemeth would like to help?" Nyx glanced in Morrigan's direction, but the witch kept staring in the distance. Nyx frowned, but she said no more. The sorceress took a step back and Leliana felt her power rise like a dark wind.

"Maker!"

Leliana had no formal knowledge of magic, Chantry-sanctioned or otherwise; nothing had prepared her for the blinding terror that came when Nyx's body – and _Leliana's_ body, for they were one through the Bond- started to wane and unravel. The bard fell to her knees, too sick to even cry out. She felt Nyx's bewilderment, anger, and increasing frustration as the elf struggled to work the transformation and finally gave up, falling back onto the withered grass with a little groan.

Zevran shot right past the dazed sorceress and knelt by Leliana's side. "Are you all right?" he inquired in a low tone. Leliana nodded weakly.

"Shit. That was unexpected," Nyx groaned.

"What the Void was that?" Zevran shot back, and Leliana almost smirked at his accusatory tone.

"It's all right, Zev," she said in a weak voice, "Just a little weak spell. I am feeling better already." Leliana did not wish to elaborate about the Bond, not with Morrigan – Flemeth – whatever - listening by.

"Weak spell, indeed," Nyx quipped as she got up to her feet, looking thoroughly disappointed but no worse for the wear. "I'm afraid we'll have to do without aerial reconnaissance, though."

* * *

Based on to Zevran's early travels and Leliana's knowledge of old maps, the companions decided to travel off the highway, taking advantage of hilly, forested terrain where marching armies were least likely to be found. They found the woods to be depressingly silent, as though most wildlife had fled the coming war and the unnatural weather. The trees were bare, and the underbrush looked sickly, with many plants rotting on foot as a result of the unpredictable gusts of icy winds that had taken over the gentle northern winter. At night, Leliana found herself scanning the sky for the stars, but even that glimmer of beauty was denied her. The night sky was a blotch of dirty, vaguely glowing grey, and it was hardly darker than during the day. It was, she reflected glumly, as though day and night were mingling into never-ending gloom.

The walk North was a slow, grinding progress, and they may well have fulfilled Toast's gloomy prophecy and perished from cold and hunger, had they not been able to salvage food and clothing from a deserted woodcutter settlement they stumbled across. It seemed that the inhabitants had been evacuated in relatively orderly fashion, leaving behind meticulously sealed houses and well-garnished larders. Even though Zevran mocked her, Leliana insisted to leave a few silvers in each of the homes they "visited", hoping, as their denizens had hoped, that no marauding soldiers would pillage the place. In one of those homes, she found a well-written note pleading in Orlesian, Nevarran and Antivan that coming soldiers take what they wanted, but leave the walls standing for the family that lived here. Zevran stopped mocking Leliana after he read the note.

Not all of the settlements they came across were that lucky, though. In many instances, the companions had to make large detours to avoid the smoldering ruins that army scouts – or bandits, the line between those species being thin and ill-defined- had left behind. Those were the worst days, for Zevran and Leliana spent long hours scouting ahead, slowing their progress to a crawl. In spite of all their precautions, the companions were ambushed twice. The first encounter was with Orlesian mercenaries, who fell upon their camp in the dark of night and gave them absolutely no chance of exposing their identities as Celene's agents. Nyx and her companions slaughtered them, the bard and the sorceress fighting together with the precision of a well-oiled killing machine. No mercy was asked, and so none was given.

The second and more unfortunate encounter was with a handful of Nevarran deserters, whom they found huddled in an abandoned farm's cellar. The deserters, as famished and desperate as a pack of feral dogs, attacked on sight, and the companions dispatched them with ease in the darkness of that cellar. It was only when Leliana shone a lantern that she saw how young the Nevarran conscripts were, boys and girls hardly of marrying age with armor that floated over their emaciated frames. Now Leliana wished she hadn't looked at the dead faces. Nyx didn't share her compunction, of course, and told her so rather bluntly; and so they argued, and brooded, and came together again, because for more reasons than one, they could not stand to be apart.


	33. Chapter 33: Indiscretions

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Indiscretions**

* * *

There were two ways to look at Starkheaven.

If you were from, say, Kirkwall or Ferelden, you may well be impressed by the jewel of the Free Marches, a well-built, clean city. If, like a great many of the Chantry dignitaries that now crowded its cloisters and clerical palaces, you happened to be from Orlais, you may be more inclined to spend a great deal of time making disparaging comments about the dreadful functionality of its architecture and its provincial food.

An Orlesian herself, Grand Cleric Dorothea didn't care much for the city or the food, but she found her fellow clerics' lack of respect for their hosts mildly annoying. The Chantry may transcend nations and borders, but Maker forbid that His servants stop behaving like chauvinistic brats.

Never had the attachment of clerics to their homelands been a more sensitive issue than today. If Dorothea was right – and she saw and heard a lot of things, courtesy of her unseen friends - then clerical support for Reigning Divine Diane's Exalted March was dwindling. Much of the opposition, of course, came from scions of Orlesian nobility who stood to lose much in the war.

But there was also growing dissent amongst the other nations as it became evident that Empress Celene would not simply lay down her arms and submit. Nevarran clerics were haggard, still reeling from the news of the Orlesian invasion, worry for their flock and families slowly turning to repressed anger towards the inexplicably absent Diane. As a steady stream of messengers flowed through Starkhaven's gates, bearing news of Nevarra's debacle, the Free Marches' envoys had grown more somber by the day. The Free Marchers were well aware that their own cities were next in line.

There was hushed speculation that Diane's rushed, ill-prepared attack on Orlais had achieved nothing but a resurgence of the previously slumbering Empire, now energized and mercilessly purged of all dissidence. There were even, Maker forbid, those who advocated turning to Tevinter for assistance, and even though they were still a small, ridiculed minority, their numbers seemed to grow by the day.

In Dorothea's eyes, what Diane had accomplished first and foremost was to illustrate how divided and disorganized the Holy Andrastian Chantry really was. As long as it had faced no serious foe, the Chantry had appeared as strong and immovable as stone; the rise of Diane and her ultra-traditionalist allies, by stifling internal discussion, had contributed to reinforcing the impression. Now Divine Marguerite was dead, her surrogate was away chasing licorns in the Silent Plains, and Dorothea watched the most powerful organization in Thedas slowly descend into hysteria.

It was a sobering lesson, and one that may cost the faithful much. But, unlike her more privileged colleagues, Dorothea came from a less… conventional background. She accepted that change often came under the guise of chaos; and that with change, came opportunity.

It was nearly noon, and the gardens before Starkheaven's Cathedral were swarming with clerical robes, some a demure brown, others more garish depending on the rank and nationality of their wearer. While matters of faith and holy wars were at stake, the Chantry leadership still had to cope with their Maker-imposed earthly needs, and so the clerics were slowly drifting away from the Cathedral and into the vast pavilions erected on the grounds, where an army of cooks prepared meals appropriate for some of Thedas's most demanding taste buds.

Dorothea scanned the crowd with the ease of long years of practice and found the object of her search, a young man clad in unremarkable, brown robes with the hood drawn low over his brow. As Dorothea got closer, the man's head pivoted in a slow, deliberate motion, and piercing amber eyes zeroed in on her.

"Your Holiness," the man said in thick Nevarran accent.

"Child," Dorothea said simply. There was little use for names in their current business. Those that knew the man, and what he stood for, knew how fleeting names and titles were. "What news from Nevarra?"

"It is as you expected, Your Holiness," the hooded man replied. "The second courier, bearing the Conclave's official convocation, was spotted entering the Reigning Divine's encampment, but has not left it." He uttered the words "Reigning Divine" with a hint of contempt that didn't escape Dorothea's attention, but the Grand Cleric said nothing.

Dorothea said a short, mental prayer for the envoy. It was still possible, even likely, that the envoy was alive and well, and treated as an honored guest by Diane. But Dorothea's instinct told her otherwise; if the Reigning Divine ever came out of her inexplicable retreat in the Silent Plains, Diane would probably claim that no messenger had ever reached her camp.

Well, Maker bless her bones, the poor envoy may serve the Chantry better in death than she ever had in life.

"Thank you," Dorothea said. "Please ask your Nevarran brothers and sisters to maintain their… _protective_ watch over Her Supreme Holiness's activities."

The man bowed curtly and walked away, dissolving into the crowd like a shadow. Dorothea remained immobile, pondering her next move. It didn't take long. Diane's refusal to appear before the Conclave to expose the proofs of her accusations against Celene was damning enough; the envoy's disappearance may well prove the final nail in her coffin. For the first time in a few centuries, the Conclave would have to break away with tradition. Now it was time for Dorothea to rouse old allies, to forge new alliances, to placate old adversaries, all the while watching her back for Diane's minions, of course.

The Chantry needed a new Divine, and fast.

* * *

Today, for the first time, the visions overwhelm Leliana as she walks wide awake through the Nevarran woodland. There is no signal, no transition, no falling sensation or sudden sleepiness. One instant she is walking by Nyx's side, marveling at the feline agility with which the formerly awkward mage moves; next, she stands in Elgar'Nan's throne room, now her Lord and husband's.

The Dread Wolf has had the ruins of the edifice repaired with wood from the sacred forests he shares with Andruil, but he has left the ruins of Elgar'Nan's throne untouched as a reminder to his old rival's sons and daughters. Amid the wreckage of stone and gold, the King of the gods sits atop the gnarled stump of a millennial ironbark tree; on his insistence, Andruil sits at his side. In the rumble at the foot of his throne, Fen'Harel has planted the seed of a new tree; the elves have nurtured and woven the tender limbs of the young vhenadhal, and the delicate, living cradle now sings softly to itself, waiting for the godling to be born.

Andruil shifts uneasily. Her pregnancy is nearing its term; the babe will be born soon, it is a matter of a few years at most. Despite her shapeshifting powers and considerable mastery over her own substance, Andruil still feels unnaturally slow and clumsy, and never has the passing of time felt so slow to Elgar'Nan's immortal daughter. The Dread Wolf has forbidden she joins in his slow, grinding war against the Trespassers, and she loathes every minute she has spent waiting for the combatants to return.

In response to her irritation, the little being in her kicks with great enthusiasm, and Andruil growls softly. Untamed, preposterous seed of a savage father… The Goddess of the Hunt beams with pride and caresses her swollen belly. _Soon, my un-fanged little fiend. Soon you will step into this world, and lead the pack with your father_. The babe calms down, satisfied with his mother's mental reassurance.

She feels the pulse of power when Falon'Din steps into the great hall of the gods, and she eyes her brother suspiciously. The young god of Death has matured a great deal since his twin's demise, and for a few centuries Andruil has wondered if he may be foolish enough to challenge Fen'Harel. But Falon'Din has done no such thing; in fact, he has been of great help to his King, coming up with innovative ways to sunder the Veil and ensnare Trespassers. It is as though Dirthamen's death had somehow liberated him, and his almost frightening intelligence, long repressed by their father, had finally found ways to flourish under the Dread Wolf's guidance. Indeed, Falon'Din has grown a little too close to the King's ear, and Andruil has been looking for the opportunity to remind him of his rank in the pack. So far, he has denied her the chance, but the Huntress is patient.

Falon's Din approaches the throne under his most diminutive elven form, head sagely bowed until he kneels before the divine couple. The Dread Wolf growls benignly, but Andruil's smile is but a baring of fangs.

"What news, my liege?" Fen'Harel's voice is calm, but Andruil knows him too well. She sees his excitement in the way his muscles tense under his dark skin. He has been waiting for this visit ever since he came back, restless and frustrated, from yet another indecisive victory. The gods have had diminishing success in their attempts to lure the Trespassers out of the Beyond; the odd, semi-sentient entities have seemingly learnt prudence. Worse, the gods have almost run short of wyrmlings to sacrifice, and the Dread Wolf has unhappily declared a truce for a few centuries, the time for humans to repopulate and regroup in new cities. Andruil knows that her Lord grows more restless as her term approaches.

"I may have been lucky, as it were, my Lord," Falon'Din replies unctuously. "I may have finally figured out how to temporarily suspend the long sleep, allowing the soul of an elf to travel back and forth between the worlds, like a dreamer's… But with a much stronger impact on the Veil. Just like you had instructed, my Lord."

Andruil rises in outrage, and Falon'Din shrinks a little, his divine aura pulsating submissively. The Huntress ignores him altogether and turns to her husband.

"I humbly demand an explanation?" Andruil says without the slightest trace of humility.

Fen'Harel rumbles in amusement. It has been too long since they have last engaged in fighting, and in the marginally more gentle games that always follow. His aquiline nose twitches once, taking in her scent. With the nonchalant wave of a clawed hand, the Dread Wolf dismisses Falon'Din, and the young god bows and takes his leave.

"And I will _humbly_ indulge, my Queen," the Dread Wolf says once they are alone. "On _my_ order, Elgar'Nan's son has been pursuing ways to strike a decisive blow at our enemies. I grow wary of this War, my Lady. It is my wish that our son be born to a world free of the Trespassers' threat."

Andruil barely hides her impatience at the Dread Wolf's slow handling of her question, and he smirks mischievously.

"Since the beginning of the War, we have won every fight; yet the enemy endures. Baiting the vermin into our world is not enough. We need to take the fight to them. We need to enter the Beyond, my Lady. I believe _that_ is what the Sun God created me for. And I think that may be what the Ancestors created _Uthenera_ for."

_Uthenera_. It was the name the elves gave to the long sleep, the process through which their near-immortal bodies regenerated over the course of centuries while their spirits roamed the Fade in a dreamlike state. It was also the name given to the great vaults under the eastern mountains, where row upon row of elven bodies, neither living nor dead, dreamed encased in stone and shimmering light.

To the elves, Uthenera was utterly sacred, even more so than the gods and their abodes in Arlathan. To the gods, it was a revered heirloom of the Ancestors and a feat of ancient magic that Elgar'Nan had renounced to comprehend, instead handing over its conservation to his least despised son, Falon'Din. The Friend of the Dead, as Falon'Din came to be known, had taken up this duty with enthusiasm, for he was of a caring, inquisitive nature, although whatever he discovered, he learned not to share with Elgar'Nan. Only once did the young god hypothesize aloud that Uthenera may be nothing more than a gigantic, dreaming brain, a distraction allowing the elves to endure the boredom of their slow regenerative process, lest the eldest of them became mad from the millennia of immobility. For presuming to pierce the mysteries of the Ancestors, and presumably for outsmarting his divine father, Falon'Din had been beaten to within one inch of his life, and henceforth he kept his observations to himself.

What Falon'Din now suggested was not _right_, Andruil thought angrily. This was nothing short of sacrilegious, an insult to the ancient covenant struck between the Ancestors and the lesser races. How many elves were in Uthenera? Millions?

"Peace, my Queen. I will not claim the dreamers' lives," Fen'Harel says, taking Andruil's hand in his, "I only need for them to be briefly awakened and then sent back into the Beyond. This will create a… wave of sorts… that I can use to break through the Veil. That is what I asked Falon'Din to help me prepare."

"_No_."

"No?" The Dread Wolf casts a warning look at his Queen. "Pray you, elaborate."

"No. I will _not_ have my husband be swallowed by the Lands of the Dead, never to see his son. If a god must forge on with this… madness, then let it be Falon'Din. Let my brother make the journey, and come back alive. Then we shall know that the passage is safe."

The Dread Wolf roars in laughter and pulls Andruil into a fierce hug. "A wise plan," he growls, "I chose well."

"Is that so, Nightson? I believe _I _was the one who chose _you_." Andruil taunts, razor-sharp claws running lightly on the god's naked back. The Dread Wolf's flesh shifts and undulates under her touch; he allows the light wounds to remain open for an instant before the divine flesh knits together again. The smell of the divine essence rises, drowning out the scents and noises of the outside world.

"Can you fight, my Lady?" he growls deeply.

"That is… unadvisable, my Lord. What say we skip the fighting?"

"Scandalous. But I shall pardon your transgressions."

Andruil takes a second to take in the sight of the world's most powerful being waiting for her pleasure. There is, and there always will be, something of the hunter's satisfaction in her smile as she stretches languorously, breaking contact for a tantalizing second.

And then the Huntress moves onto her quarry.

* * *

"Another vision?"

Leliana snapped back to reality with the guilty start of a teenager caught peeping. She confusedly registered that her surroundings were markedly different from when she had slipped into daydreaming, suggesting that she may have sleepwalked for a while before she ended up sitting in a grassy hollow. Nyx sat with her legs crossed before her, a strange expression on her tiny face. Toast and Zevran were talking, some distance ahead on an ill-defined forest path. There was no sign of Morrigan.

"I… No… I mean, yes. Yes, it was a vision," Leliana stuttered, her face turning a deep shade of pink. The mental images were fading already, leaving mostly impressions.

"Care to share?"

Something in Nyx's casual tone caught Leliana's attention, and she looked more closely at the little Warden, her embarrassment mounting exponentially as she noticed the elf's flushed cheeks.

"_Oh. _I… see_. _You… ah, you _felt_ something, didn't you?" Leliana asked.

"Not much. Nothing like that time in the Tower, at any rate. I still asked the others to go and look for a camp site, just in case. I think Zev suspected something," Nyx added with a grimace.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't know about that. It was fun, in a creepy kind of way."

Leliana shook her head. Sometimes she just couldn't understand the elf. "I don't _enjoy_ those visions, Nyx," she said reproachfully, "especially not when I have to peep into someone's bedchamber."

Nyx's expression turned serious, and she leaned forward, her eyes trained on the bard's. "I know. And I am sorry for making you go through this. But we may as well try to make sense of them. Did you see anything that could help?"

A fragment from an old Orlesian ballad drifted through Leliana's mind. _And they cast down their royal mantles, so that they were but flesh._

"I… it was confusing," she said at last. "The beings… The old Fen'Harel, and Andruil, discussed their plans to enter the Fade and fight their enemies there. It had something to do with the elves, I think. Then they, hum, you know. Nothing really important," Leliana concluded with a nervous laugh. Nyx looked at her pensively.

"I'm not sure," Nyx said after a while, "but I think the gods trying to enter the Fade is pretty significant."

"Well, don't dreamers and mages enter the Fade on a regular basis?"

Nyx shook her head. "Not _bodily_, Lel. They say that the Tevinter magisters had to shed the blood of thousands to achieve that. Thousands! For a handful of scrawny mages! But the gods…" Nyx rose and paced excitedly as she talked. "The gods were _massive_, Lel. You and I both felt that. You don't fit an elephant through a pinhole. When Fen'Harel crossed into the Beyond, he must really have torn the Veil a new one."

The sorceress continued to pace for a few seconds, her brow furrowed in reflection. There was an intensity about her that Leliana found both fascinating and vaguely scary, for it reminded her of the god-king of her visions. After a while, the elf sat by her side with a frustrated sigh.

"Well, I give up for now. But I'd like you to let me have a look next time you start daydreaming. Please," the sorceress added as Leliana frowned, "I really think it could help."

"We don't know that it isn't dangerous for you to do so," Leliana reminded softly. "The visions could be a trap."

"Well, you're here to protect me, aren't you? My knight in shining armor?" Nyx asked in a squeaky imitation of Orlesian accent, complete with exaggerated flutter of eyelashes.

Leliana chuckled. "Oh, the horror! Stop playing distressed princess, please. You're giving me goose bumps."

"Bah. You're jealous of my princess impersonation. Some bard."

"I happen to have impersonated a duchess. Twice. That has to count for something."

"_I_ happen to have kicked a Teyrn's ass. I think you met the old bastard. "

"I had the honor. He didn't seem to resent the kicking, by the way."

"So will you let me..?"

"Fine," Leliana murmured reluctantly, "Just… Just be careful, all right?"

"Careful is my middle name, my bard," Nyx said with a wide grin.

For the second time, Leliana had to laugh out loud. "And that, from a person who thought setting herself on fire was a good idea. I stand reassured," she said as she rose to her feet. The wind blew from the camp, carrying the scent of roasted ham, and Leliana's stomach growled. "Come," she said, "dinner is waiting."

* * *

When minstrels sing of the night, they like to spin tales of silence and peace.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In the ancient forests of Thedas, the fall of night signals the end of the truce. Furtive shadows roam the woods, and the night wind tells tales of violence and agony.

The hunter moves swiftly and silently, its lithe form flowing like water from shadow to shadow, head hung low with sinister purpose. It is far from its usual hunting ground, but it has followed its prey as the lesser creatures fled the howling northern winds. It is famished, and its rough hide hangs loosely on a powerful frame. It must feed, soon, lest it lacks the strength to hunt and falls to smaller, more frugal predators.

The hunter stops at the top of a gently sloping hill; and perking its triangular ears, it listens intently. Unfamiliar sounds rise from a point far down the where it stands, voices and whispers that spell danger. Images of fire and whistling arrows race through the hunter's mind, and it growls softly, its long tail beating its flanks in dismay. The hunter bares its fangs, hesitates, but hunger is too strong, and it slowly starts down the slope.

Closer now, and the wind carries the prey's scent, adding to the hunter's hunger and growing confusion. There is sturdy cow skin, and there is fragile skin, sea salt and sweat, lily, cinnamon, crushed grass, cold metal and a stench like the things that hide under the hills; and then there is something else, something that awakens a fear that was ingrained into the genes of the hunter's forebears when the hills were flat and the plains were hills. The hunter shakes its maw in frustration and spins around, and then the smell of blood mixed with burning metal rises, and hunger is so strong.

Onward goes the hunter, until it stops in the shadow of an old elm, peeking fearfully at what writhes between the trees. The hunter cannot decide whether these are two beings fighting for dominance, or one being consuming itself, for while its two heads seem locked into struggle, it has but one breath, and its twin hearts pulse on the same, slow beat as the wisps of bluish fire that illuminate the scene. Strange energies pound through the forest soil, and blood trickles lazily, streaks of black and silver on white flesh. The being's heads come apart, azure stares defiantly into metal, and for an agonizing second the hunter fears that it may be discovered. Then the being's heads lock again, and the hunter crouches low, terrified, trembling and unable to pounce or retreat.

A soothing hand ruffles the hair behind the hunter's ears, and the hunter peers up into eyes as savage as its own.

"Hush," the apparition whispers, "this quarry is beyond your skill."

The jaguar cocks its head in mute questioning; the apparition's lips part in a cruel smile.

"Perhaps not beyond mine," Flemeth murmurs, "but that remains to be seen."


	34. Chapter 34: The fall of the Wolf

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**The fall of the Wolf**

_Well, this took forever. We are quite close to the end of this unreasonably (and quite unexpectedly) long tale, and I am now forced to confront some choices I've been postponing forever. Thanks to all readers, faves and reviewers!_

* * *

Paperwork, paperwork…. Even at war, it seemed the Empire's passion with bureaucracy never abated.

Arnaud Villeneuve, Comte d'Arcon, raised a heavily bejeweled hand to scratch the patchy stubble on his cheek. In normal times, the Comte would never have gone a day without shaving, but those were not normal times. There was a war going on, after all, and that meant Arnaud could shave when he pleased and didn't have, thank the Maker, to endure the ministrations of a face-painting artist at the small hours of the day.

On the other hand, the camp's food was decidedly lackluster, and had been so ever since the master cook had taken an arrow through the eye, poor soul. Replacement was on the way from Val Royaux, but it had been a fortnight since Arnaud had eaten anything remotely decent, and he was in poor spirits as he perused the small mountain of mail delivered by the morning courier.

A silver bell rang, announcing a visitor, and an instant later the thick neck and cauliflower ears of Luc Gascon, the Militia Commander in charge of the blockade of the Minanter bridges, peered into the General's pavilion.

"Can I enter, Your Highness, Sir?" the man asked with an embarrassed grimace.

"It would appear you've done so already, my good man. Come on, get in already. You're letting in the cold."

"Yes, Your Highness, Sir," Luc replied, hastily letting the pavilion's heavy curtains fall back behind him. He then stood before Arnaud's desk, shifting on his feet and looking even more nervous than usual.

"Well, _talk_, man. Or did the Nevarrans eat your tongue?" In general, Arnaud didn't mind the little people's skittishness in his presence; he took it in stride, as was becoming of an Imperial cousin. It was only fun for a time, however, and Arnaud despaired to one day be able to communicate normally with the old soldier. If Luc was not so darned good at his job, he would have replaced him an eternity ago.

Luc blushed deeply. "Yes, Your Highness, beg your pardon, Your Highness. It's about the Highway bridge, Your Highness. Our troops there, huh, found five people trying to get across to the Nevarran side. They were captured, Your Highness."

"Oh, my… Your men captured some Nevarran filth. How utterly exciting," Arnaud said with a yawn.

"Ah, no, beg your pardon, Your Highness," Luc said piteously. The man was sweating profusely in spite of the less-than-balmy temperature. "It's _our_ _men_ were captured, Your Highness. The, ah, captors asked after you, Your Highness, my General, Sir. Gave me an envelope with the Imperial seal and all." Luc reached into his pocket and respectfully placed a sealed envelope on the General's desk, then stood sweating and looking every bit as though he was going to faint.

Arnaud examined the seal with curiosity. As a general and distant relative of the Empress, he was relatively familiar with such things, and he immediately recognized the mark of Celene's personal guard – a trademark of her cherished secret police. If it was a forgery, it was a good one. Arnaud broke the seal with a little thrill; one of the things he'd missed most about Val Royeaux was the excitement of intrigue.

The envelope, it seemed at first sight, was empty, but something in it rattled softly. Arnaud held the envelope upside down, and a small, rectangular piece of hard paper fell onto the mahogany desk.

"My, my, but this is positively _exciting_," Arnaud murmured. The card was virginally white, except for the Imperial crest etched in gold in the upper right corner; the bearer's odd name, "_To The Dwarf Toast_", on the left; and in the lower right corner, traced by a nervous, fast hand: "_Celene Drakon_."

The carte blanche.

Arnaud got to his feet stiffly; he was being summoned by the Empress, and it was unhealthy to wait on Celene's summons. Perhaps, he thought as he called onto his servants to help him don his ceremonial armor and his great hat, the one with the scarlet ostrich feathers, perhaps he _should_ have had his face painted today.

* * *

Madness, it seemed, was a contagious disease. But why worry? Zevran was having fun.

Zevran spun lightly and caught the militiaman's wrist, drew him into a brief embrace, then released him with a little chuckle and turned to Toast, just in time to catch a smile on the dwarf's scarred face.

"Come on, carissima, just one dance," he called cajolingly, "I promise I will keep my hands to myself, unless you insist of course…"

Toast did not budge from the spot where she sat in the shadow of a stone bridge head. Zevran saw her make a visible effort to frown, but she did not quite succeed. Magic, of a kind unknown to the severe magi in their towers, buzzed and throbbed around Nyx's companions, and even though they were not the targets of the spell, it was all but impossible to completely shrug off its effects.

It was easy to forget that beyond the spell's boundaries, the world was consumed by war. Beyond the barricades at both ends of the bridge, arrows were trained on Nyx's companions. The dancing Orlesian soldiers, their faces frozen in dreamy expressions, were but a human shield. But life was good, and it was hard to feel worried. There was only the here and now, the present begging to be enjoyed. Even Morrigan looked pensive, albeit a little sad, as if she were contemplating things long lost: her soul, perhaps.

All around Zevran, the Orlesian soldiers turned and danced slowly, dreaming of things unknown. The little reed flute that had started the spell was nowhere to be seen, but somehow the melody endured, lingering on the air like a wisp of perfume.

It wasn't just Leliana's music; Zevran knew that it must be Nyx's blood magic that lent it such pervasive power. Yet the spell lacked the sorceress's trademark ruthlessness, and it seemed to Zevran that Nyx's expression was as dreamy as the dancing soldiers'. Leliana held Nyx in a close, protective embrace, her eyes fixed on things only she could see.

Zevran heard a little commotion rise among the soldiers massed beyond the reach of the spell; moments later two men emerged from the Orlesian ranks. The first man was tall, graying and a hardened warrior; the second was shorter and younger, soft under the gilded armor. The soft man raised his hand in command.

"Stand down! Stand down! I want all weapons sheathed immediately!"

The dancing men and women parted to let them through, but the soft man didn't step into their circle. Holding up Toast's envelope, he called to Nyx's companions in a cultivated, high-pitched voice.

"Greetings, my lords and ladies. Which one of the honorable company is, huh, _The Dwarf Toast_?"

Zevran chuckled, and Toast made a vulgar noise as she rose to her full height, all four feet of it.

"Seen as I'm no Qunari, I guess it must be me," she said drily.

Muffled laughter mounted from the Orlesian ranks. The second man silenced it with a deep scowl.

"I am Arnaud Villeneuve, General and Comte d'Arcon," the soft man said, bowing deeply, "at the Empress's service, and ready to lend assistance, by the Empress's will."

"We are your humble servants, Your Highness," Leliana intervened tactfully. The remainders of the melody waned as the bard curtsied; a number of the dancing militiamen fell to the ground, panting with exertion. "I am Leliana, at your service. This gentleman here is Zevran Arainai, _artist_ extraordinaire, and this lady…"

"Hi," Nyx interrupted with what may have passed for a friendly smile, "I'm Nyx. I kill Archdemons and stuff." The General-Comte's jaw dropped a little, and Leliana bit her lips as the assembled soldiers started babbling excitedly.

"Ah, yes… As I was saying, Your Highness, this lady is a highly regarded Grey Warden, from _Ferelden_," Leliana added apologetically. The little General-Comte's expression brightened. Zevran could feel the man's relief; Fereldan equaled boor equaled no need to feel offended by the very, _very_ scary elf. The General-Comte bowed again, although imperceptibly higher than he had before.

"Truly an honor," he said. "Allow me to welcome you to my personal quarters, where a light collation will be served in your honor. It would be unwise to linger here, so close to the False Divine's rabble."

Zevran raised an eyebrow. So that was what the Orlesians called Diane now: False Divine. No doubt the soldiers would have other, less kind titles for their enemy, too. Zevran wondered if Celene might, in time, take the mantle of Divine for herself, turning the Andrastian two-way split into an uneasy _ménage a trois_. So much strife, so much blood spilled over the souls of the faithful. So many juicy opportunities… Truly golden times for an assassin, and here he was, Zevran Arainai, set on a crusade to take down a myth.

Sighing deeply, Zevran followed his friends into the Orlesian camp.

* * *

Arnaud's – Nyx really couldn't be bothered with remembering the General-Comte's full name – Arnaud's light collation comprised sixteen dishes, and as many wines. Nyx remained silent during most of the meal; Leliana had asked her, gently but firmly, to let her handle the talking. And so the sorceress sat at a fair distance from the General-Comte, and contented herself with nibbling at the dishes and waiting for dessert, which, when it came, was plentiful enough to make her forget her initial distrust.

By the time Nyx wolfed down her third chocolate éclair, she was about convinced that Leliana had been right when she had demanded that they spare the bridge guards instead of blazing through them like Fen'Harel's very wrath. Plus, she thought as she greedily eyed a platter of choux, there would certainly be plenty of fighting ahead anyway.

If anything, this momentary respite from the rigors of the road was doing Leliana good. Nyx smiled at the sight of the bard, resplendent in a dress borrowed from one of the junior officers' mistress, the dirt and distress of the road now erased from her features. Leliana sat among the Orlesian officers like a queen holding court, effortlessly goading the men and women into giving away every last detail of the ongoing campaign while feeding them only the tiniest crumbs of information about her own person and motivations.

Not that it really mattered what the officers did or did not know. It turned out that Toast's papers were a pretty big deal for the Orlesians; if Nyx understood correctly, the dwarf had the authority to order everyone around, including the feathered clown who appeared to be a Teyrn of sorts.

Nyx took a sip of wine and closed her eyes. She was unused to alcoholic beverages. Circle mages were not allowed to drink, for fear that they may lose their control and blow up a Chantry or Andraste knows what ridiculous excuse the Templars had made up. The wine was cool and sparkling; she could feel it spread along her veins, and she wondered how much it would affect her magic. Leaning back in her chair, the sorceress allowed herself to slip into her mind's vision. The tent and the polite guests gave way to the shimmering storms and fragrant colors of the Veil, in a whirlwind of sensations that was made maybe just a little too intense by the wine.

Here and there among the Orlesian camp, Nyx recognized the faint swirls of energy that were the auras of healers and Circle mages: frail, constrained, _pathetic_. They were dwarfed by the trine tempest that was contained in this very tent: Nyx's own aura, of course, a barely contained storm that threatened to rend the Veil even as she sat idle and pensive, and Morrigan's, dark and deceptively unassuming, a thing of simmering venom and ancient appetites bidding its time just beneath the surface of reality. And then there was Leliana's. The bard shone in Nyx's mind-eye like the reflection of the sun on distant snow.

_So strong. When had she become so strong? _

"Well," Zevran whispered, "what do you think?"

Nyx groaned and opened her eyes to look at her fellow elf.

"I think I should have ignored your advice about the wine."

Zevran smirked. "No, I meant, what do you think about the General here," he whispered.

Nyx examined the little man again. "Pansy," she said flatly, and probably louder than was polite.

Zevran tsked disapprovingly and leaned closer to her ear. "My dear Warden, for all your magic and near-divinity, you are quite inept at reading people. Don't let the ribbons and makeup fool you. This is an ambitious of the worst kind; one who wouldn't mind selling his own mother into servitude, if that could land him another title to add to his long name."

"So?"

"So I think our bard friend has picked on this the minute she has seen the man, and I wouldn't be too surprised if she was now working out a way to put this knowledge to good use."

"Good. As long as her plan doesn't involve getting too bardy… Huh, pretend I didn't say anything," Nyx added precipitously, but not fast enough that Zevran didn't flash a wide, toothy grin.

"Possessive, hmm?"

"How about you mind your own sodding business, Antivan?"

"So I was wondering, did you ever feel concerned that I might follow your advice? You know, about, hum, filling in your shoes?"

Nyx grimaced and took a sip of wine. The drink, combined with the fatigue of the road and a full stomach, made her feel pleasantly mellow. Sometimes, it was best to humor Zevran, if only to shut him up. "I was _Tranquil_, Zev. I didn't give a shit. Disappointed?"

"Curious. So you really wouldn't have cared if..?"

"Nope. Not one bit. That is, not until I was freed," Nyx added with a mischievous smile; "_then_, I would have tracked you down and torn you limb from limb. And that's for starters."

"You know, I will always wonder if it may not have been worth it," Zevran said dreamily. The two elves looked at each other for a second, ears and nostrils twitching slightly, and then they burst laughing.

"You know," Nyx said as she motioned for a servant to pour more wine, "I think I know just what you mean."

* * *

That night, Toast and Leliana stayed with the General-Comte for a long time, discussing strategy and drawing plans. Later, Leliana went back to the pavilion she shared with the sorceress to find Nyx snoring, lost amidst of an ocean of silk and pillows. Leliana undressed silently, blew the lantern and slipped between the sheets, but Nyx didn't wake up.

And so it was that when the vision came, Nyx did not stir, not until Leliana's thrashing awoke her.

And perhaps it was better this way.

* * *

Andruil stands on a snowy platform, atop a peak so high that the air here feels stretched out, and carries nothing but the smell of fresh snow and empty space. Below her, and below the surrounding peaks, the mountains are hollow, a honeycomb of intersecting tunnels that house innumerable generations of elves, all of them frozen in the long sleep.

_Uthenera. _

A few steps away from the goddess, her king and mate paces with an impatience that would be comical in a less terrible being. This is to be Fen'Harel's glory day, his crowning achievement. Today the Dread Wolf will bring the gods' enemies to justice.

On and on the Wolf paces, his nervous step telling of barely restrained anger, of a hunger so terrible it threatens to overwhelm even his overwhelming pride. The War must stop, at any cost. Yet, Andruil feels strangely uneasy. She growls softly, and Fen'Harel finally stops his pacing and turns to his queen.

"The plan will work, my Lady. Trust me as I trust in my strength."

"I trust your strength, my Lord. My brother's intelligence, less so."

"I understand your reservations about him, but so far, his advice has been sound."

Andruil nods drily. Even though he seemed loath to share his knowledge, Falon'Din has shown his king how to merge his mind with the complex magical construct that is Uthenera, effectively taking control of the Ancestors' last and most beautiful creation to create a rift in the Veil. Much to Falon'Din's dismay, the young god was the first sent into the Beyond, and then only for a few seconds. Falon'Din came back exhausted and terrified, and the "experiment" sent out a powerful tremor that knocked down a few buildings in faraway Arlathan, but it was a success. Yet Andruil is not reassured.

"My Lord, we still do not understand what waits behind the Veil. Why will you let no one fight at your side?"

Fen'Harel shakes his massive head impatiently. "We cannot send all of the gods into the Beyond. And who shall stand by my side? June, the tinkerer? Dreamy Sylaise? Sickly Falon'Din? Only you, my Lady, would be of any use to me," he says pointing at Andruil's taut belly, "And you have more sacred duties to attend."

Andruil stares unhappily into the faint line of the horizon, where the hazy green of the land melds into the sky.

"The Protector could help," she says at last.

"Mythal? What love does Elgar'Nan's mate harbor for _me_? How is _that_ better than going alone?" Fen'Harel growls.

Andruil says nothing. After Dirthamen's death, Mythal has retired to her dominions under the Northern Sea, mumbling vague prophecies about the fall of the gods. The Protector wields impressive magic, but by Elgar'Nan's assessment she has always been a little touched in the head, and the successive losses of her mate and son have not improved things. By any reckoning, the All-Mother is unlikely to help.

"No, my Queen, _I_ will end the Trespassers' threat, as the Sun God intended," Fen'Harel concludes, placing a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder. "And I will come back to a more peaceful world. Come, it is time."

The rock under Andruil's feet has started to vibrate, imperceptibly at first, then more strongly, until the very air and the peaks around the divine couple hum and pulsate like the heart of some gigantic, primeval creature. Far below the snowy crests, Falon'Din works his strange magic, and thousands upon thousands of elven bodies, covered in the rocky accretions of time, moan and stir in their disturbed sleep. Great clouds form around the peak, the air grows thick with the smell of ozone, and howling winds rise, as though nature itself protested the imminent violation of her most sacred laws.

In the eye of the storm, a single point of light appears, the focal point of energies so great they dwarf even the Wolf God's power. Fen'Harel steps forward, his face a mask of savage resolution, and the light wraps around his body like a carnivorous flower around a fly. The earth shakes as something, deep underground, reacts to the outrage that is being perpetrated, and the tunnels of Uthenera fill with the groans of millions of dreamers.

And then Andruil stands alone on top of the mountain, staring into blue, serene skies.

The goddess manipulates the snowy platform's environment to suit her needs; walls and a couch of sorts, insubstantial yet solid, materialize from thin air, and she calls forth a tiny particle of sunfire to keep the cold away. Then, coiled like a cat in a nest of sunrays, Andruil closes her eyes and waits.

* * *

The vision shifts to a hazy, unreal landscape, and Leliana realizes that she is being shown things that Andruil herself couldn't witness, and could only have learned later. The images carry with them feelings of loss, fear and pain so intense that the bard struggles to awaken, but it is not permitted.

She sees an ethereal vista of ever-shifting land and haze, a realm where colors, ideas and sound are interchangeable. And she sees Him: the Wolf-Lord, stalking the lands of the dead and the dreamers, searching for his enemies.

He moves effortlessly, hardly disoriented by his strange surroundings, sustained by power and pride beyond reckoning. Leliana catches a brief glimpse of Fen'Harel's thoughts and recoils, terrified; the god's mind is alien, even more so than Andruil's. Yet, there are familiar elements in here, and she briefly wonders at the pale reflect of love that burns along with his pride, his hunger, and his all-encompassing _rage_.

Rage. If there is anything that defines Fen'harel, this is it: rage against the Sun God, who created him to serve his own, unknown purposes. Rage against Elgar'Nan, the usurper, rage against the Trespassers, and last but not least, rage against himself, for not having yet fulfilled his destiny.

The Dread Wolf soars through the yellow skies of this strangely desert world; he flies past bald meadows and nonsensical oceans, moving forests and flat mountains. The tiny forms of the dreamers run into hiding, and strange, ill-defined beings – things devoid of form or purpose – stare at his passing dubitatively. He ignores them all, for they are not worthy of his rage.

He sees it at last.

From afar, Leliana could not say if it is a city or a forest, and perhaps it is _both_; its structures are impossibly tall and graceful, even more so that the spires of Arlathan, and they sway gently, like trees in the wind. In the hazy light of the Beyond, it casts a gleam like the sun playing on golden wheat. Leliana is smitten by its beauty, but the Dread Lord is not impressed.

Fen'Harel lets out a roar of triumph. There are forms moving about between the golden structures, things with multiple limbs, chrome carapaces and steel barbs that break and refract the ambient light. Here, in their own domain, they seem less menacing than they were on Thedas; they crawl unhurriedly, purposefully from branch to ridge, like a colony of well-disciplined ants, totally oblivious to their approaching foe. There are thousands of them, yet the Dread Wolf does not seem worried.

Fen'Harel shifts into the shape of a titanic wolf and lands on the outskirts of the city, forest, _hive_, whatever that divinely beautiful construct, crawling with insane horrors, may indeed be. The god's very weight warps the ground, causing some of the structures to collapse with groans of tortured metal and rent flesh; they _bleed_ where they break, and incongruously bright blood cascades onto the bluish earth.

_Now_ the Trespassers are aware of Fen'Harel's approach, and an insane hum fills the air as thousands upon thousands of horned, articulated bodies soar and crawl out of their dens under the golden forest. Fen'Harel's roar shakes the very fabric of the Beyond, and the battle begins.

As far as battles go, this one is rather one-sided. While the Trespassers's barbed armors have the ill-defined haziness of all things in these realms, the Dread Wolf is, by contrast, absolutely, _terribly_ material. The metallic beings throw themselves at Fen'Harel in droves, sting, biting and slicing with all their might, but he hardly feels their attacks. The god moves purposefully, almost leisurely, crushing and mauling the creatures with the professional indifference of an accomplished killer. The Trespassers' essence forms complex arabesques as it swirls around the god's maw, only to be absorbed into his ever-encroaching _mass_. Soon, Fen'Harel towers above the city, and Leliana feels the very substance of the Beyond stretch and groan as it is pulled in by his hunger. The Wolf Lord cares not. His victory is assured, and so he feasts, unaware that his hour has come.

And then _it_ happens.

It starts with a distant whisper, no more than a trickle, an echo of fear and anger; within seconds, the whisper has become a clamor, the voice of tortured multitudes, terror and genocide being given voice.

The Trespassers' multitude stop their attack; burning eyes and pulsating antennae scan the Beyond's yellow skies, barbed mandibles fidget nervously. The Dread Wolf raises his huge head, maw trickling with silver-like fluids, just as a tremendous shockwave shakes the ground, toppling the golden city's surviving buildings and scattering the Trespassers like toys.

Leliana sees _it_ rise on the horizon: a billowing, wall-like darkness that devours everything in its path, and for an agonizing moment she is reminded of the vision in Lothering, of how she used to believe that it came from the Maker. Now that she sees it through the eyes of the Dread Wolf, she partially understands its nature. It is anger, insanity and above all, betrayal. It is the broken promise of the Ancestors; it is the host of the dead, ripped from the promise of eternity and left with nothing but hunger.

In the seconds before the tsunami of souls is on him, Fen'Harel desperately tries to send his thoughts through the Veil, to command Falon'Din to bring him back. Then the darkness closes in on him, screaming and howling, and as it swallows the Trespassers, the golden city and himself, Fen'Harel understands how he has been betrayed.

Leliana has a last vision of the god standing among the blackening and withering trees of the golden forest, of the flesh being stripped off pale bones even as he snarls in pain, roars his challenge to death, and _shifts_.

* * *

Andruil blazes through the crumbling maze that was once Uthenera. She doesn't stop to take in the extent of the damage to the ancient structure; it is painfully obvious that Uthenera is no more. Instead, the goddess dilates time as she goes, leaving in her track a series of supersonic bangs as she flies through tunnels and great tombs, stopping only microseconds to burn through obstacles. Her mind is focused on one thing and one thing only:

_Bloodlust._

She finds her quarry in one of the vast halls of this place, now not much more than a collapsing cave filled with fast-cooling corpses. He kneels by a dead elf's side, chanting softly. Andruil catches a few words of the song, and she snarls at their absurd irony.

_vhenan him dor'felas_

_in uthenera na revas_

"I will give you _freedom_, you betraying piece of shit!" she growls as her first spear pierces Falon'Din's chest, hurtling him off the floor and pinning him onto a far wall. The Friend of the Dead shrieks in pain and summons his bow, but it is a half-hearted attempt at defense. The Huntress's following attacks blow off half his face and most of his ribcage, and the young god collapses in a bloody heap while the divine essence in him strains to heal the wounds.

Her face set in a grim snarl, Andruil kneels by her sibling, slips a clawed hand in the gaping wound of his chest, and grasps the pulsating mass inside.

"What. Have. You. Done." Each word is punctuated with an ungentle tug.

In spite of his suffering, Falon'Din finds the strength to smile.

"I have… freed them, sister…" The younger god's pale eyes drift over the rows upon rows upon rows of now rotting elves encased in their crystal niches. "And I have freed the gods… from a tyrant."

Andruil roars in frustration and, with her free hand, drives her brother's head into the wall, crushing bones and rock. When the younger god's regenerative powers allow him to speak again, she pulls him very close to her bared fangs.

"I swear by Mythal's holy entrails, Falon'Din, if you don't answer my questions properly, I will take _millennia _to rip the essence from you. What have you done to him?"

Falon'Din nods, as though his sister's anger were confirmation of an illness he has always suspected in her, but was too shy to investigate before. When he speaks, his voice is soft and reasonable, and Andruil hates him all the more for it.

"I freed the elves. I let them all die, and in doing so I sealed the way. I sealed the Wolf into the beyond, so that he can never come back and sit on Father's throne again. Now things can be just like before, Sister. Except…" Falon'Din's voice wavers a little, and his eyes lose focus. "Except that Dirthamen is no more here, of course. But I have avenged him, I have. Father would be proud."

"Father?" Andruil spits the word onto her brother's face. "Elgar'Nan _despised_ you, you stupid runt. You have betrayed the only god who ever thought any good of you. Now help me bring my king back, or I _will_ show you an eternity of pain."

Falon'Din smiles feebly. "You cannot bring him back, Sister. Even if you slaughtered all the elves of Thedas, you would still lack the focusing power of Uthenera. But maybe you shall meet him in dreams…"

* * *

_In Uthenera verses lifted from the DA wikia, as usual, with many thanks._


	35. Chapter 35: An ounce of blood

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**An ounce of blood**

* * *

Yup... This is still being updated, albeit at a snail's pace. I do intend to finish this tale and wrap up my little Warden's tale - if only just because. Thanks as always for for reading & all!

* * *

It felt strange, riding at the head of a small army moving, slow but inexorable, through the increasingly arid landscape of northern Nevarra.

Zevran had told Leliana that it reminded him of the desperate ride between Redcliffe and Denerim, when Nyx had led the Fereldan armies against the great archdemon. Leliana had asked Nyx about it, once, and the sorceress had bitten her lips and shaken her head, as though unwilling to remember the pain and despair of these dark times. It didn't matter, Nyx said; they'd been apart then, and things had been different. From Zevran's indiscretions, Leliana had learned that Nyx had been driven nearly mad by the guilt and fear of leaving her in Denerim, and Leliana had refrained from asking any more.

The plan she and Toast had laid out for the General-Comte d'Arcon was bold and elegant: instead of following the original Orlesian plan of waiting for reinforcements on the shores of the Minanter, then assaulting the Nevarran capital, the General-Comte would keep the enemy busy at the bridges while sending out a small, fast force North, towards the Silent Plains and the supposed hideout of the False Divine. If the Orlesians succeeded in capturing the usurper, Leliana had explained, Arnaud would find himself in a position to single-handedly stop the Holy March against Orlais, and would be celebrated as a hero without peer. If they failed, Toast and Celene's secret police would take the blame.

Really, Leliana thought with a little satisfied pout, the poor Comte-General never had a chance to back off from such a deal.

"What are you thinking, my love?"

A most refreshing choice of words, Leliana reflected as she turned her gaze to the Warden, whose grey mare tottered on absently by her bay geldling. The sorceress expressing her feelings in such outspoken manner was yet another sign of the changes both of them were undergoing; changes that seemed to accelerate with every vision of Leliana's, to the extent that all but good old Zevran gave the pair a very wide berth.

"I was thinking about our chances of capturing Diane alive."

"Ugh. Do we _have_ to?"

"It would make things easier for everyone," Leliana said.

A long, long time ago, she would not even have imagined going against the Reigning Divine's will, let alone capturing or killing her. But those were times long gone, memories she now saw through the prism of experience and cynicism. Leliana still believed that the Chantry was inherently _good_, that it was rooted in values worth living for. But now she saw the rotten wood clinging to the Chantry's still vibrant tree; there were too many black sheep, self-serving manipulators ready to betray Andraste's message. And Leliana felt that Diane was the worst of them: a master in the arts of intrigue whose talent was on a par with Marjolaine's, a hypocrite, a pustule in the Maker's sight…

Leliana felt a wave of power rush through her body as her anger rose; the horses felt it, too, even though Nyx had placed them under a minor control spell so they wouldn't run from her own, dark aura. The beasts chafed and snorted, and Nyx reached for Leliana's arm with a half-smile that was also a warning: whether it came from Fen'Harel or Andruil, the gods' anger was a dangerous thing, and it was best kept for times of need.

"I don't know how you managed to control it for so long, baby," Leliana said softly, "I never imagined…"

"Well, mostly, _you_ do it for me. How are you feeling?"

"Strange. I… don't really know how to describe it. _Out of place_, perhaps?"

Nyx nodded. Ever since the fall of Fen'Harel had been burned into her mind, Leliana had hardly slept at all, although she exhibited no symptoms of physical exhaustion. In the eyes of the marching soldiers, she was still a slim, redheaded woman, pretty in an unassuming fashion, clad in light mail and well-maintained leather.

Nyx, however, saw more. She saw the aura of power that surged from the lithe body like a beacon into the Beyond. She saw the changes in Leliana's nudity when they were alone in their tent; she felt the almost inhuman strength of the muscles and sinew under white, taut skin, the contained violence of her embrace. She had seen –more than once- the silver-like sheen in the bard's blood, and for good or worse, she thought she understood the meaning of it.

Days passed on as the chevaliers rode through Nevarra, meeting almost no resistance on their way, for Diane had never planned for the Wolf-Born to lead an Orlesian assault and had focused her perverse intellect on the spinning of a web that may now be trampled under armored hooves.

They came across a few towns and villages, which, on Leliana's insistence, they left mostly un-pillaged on condition that the locals provide food for the moving army. Some of the officers balked at this blatant breach of the war etiquette, but the ill-content were referred to Nyx, who told them in rather graphic terms what she would do to dissenters: it didn't involve hugs. The grumbling subsided, although Leliana suspected that problems might arise in the near future.

As the army reached the outskirts of the Silent Plains, human settlements became scarce, then completely disappeared as the forests gave way to a yellowish steppe, and then to a barren expanse where the cold winds stirred reddish sand, reducing visibility to a few feet on either side. It was a land spoiled forever by the first Blight, a land of thirst and desperation, and even Zevran seemed a little downtrodden as the army scrambled on, wreathed in a perpetual red mist that wormed its way into clothing, eyes and mouths. The sand had a bitter, rancid taste, and it was unnaturally abrasive, causing painful rashes that took forever to heal, as though each grain still carried a spark of Archdemon Dumat's malice.

On the fourth day of their trek into the desert, they came across the woman.

She was dressed as a warrior, all steel and leather, although the steel was painted a dull black and the brown leather was rough and frayed. She lay a short distance from the road, delirious and half-dead from the cold and thirst, and the army would have passed her by if not for Leliana's preternaturally acute senses. The woman had worn perfume, a surprising vanity for a warrior, and the smell of roses stood out from all the death in her surroundings.

It took a few hours for the army healers to get the woman into talking shape. The patient was still very pale when Nyx and Leliana entered the infirmary tent; but there was a fire in the dark brown eyes, and the voice that greeted them was calm and not a little arrogant.

"Ah, and here are my rescuers. Or should I say my captors? The Orlesians are not exactly friends of my people," the woman said in Orlesian with heavy Nevarran inflexions. Nyx raised an eyebrow, but Leliana smiled engagingly.

"Maybe you could start by telling us your name, and then we could answer your question, miss..?"

"My comrades-at-arms called me Cassandra," the woman said after a minute hesitation, "that should be enough for now."

"Your friends left you to play alone in the desert?" Nyx interrupted drily.

"They're _dead_." Cassandra's tone was matter-of-factly, but there was a haunted light in her eyes.

"You have my condolences, then," Leliana said softly. The sympathy seemed to soften Cassandra up a little, and she bowed her head for a while, as if in prayer.

"They were good people," she said at last, and Leliana could tell that a page had been turned with this short eulogy.

"What happened?" Leliana asked.

"First, let me ask you a question: are you enemies of the Reigning Divine?"

"Yes."

"And what would you do once you catch up with Diane?"

Leliana paused for a second. She had little doubt as to what Nyx may do; as for herself…

"I would like to see her brought to justice, for my part. I cannot speak for my companion," she finally said.

Cassandra nodded once, and seemed to reach a conclusion. "Very well. Perhaps our goals are not so different after all, although you keep strange company," she said with a hard look at Nyx.

"Bite me," Nyx replied with an amiable smile.

"Now, now," Leliana intervened with an unconscious burst of soothing magic, "perhaps we should stick to the matter at hand. What happened to your companions?"

"We were watching over the Reigning Divine's encampment from the hills. Then something happened. Those… things… started pouring out of holes in the ground, both inside the Templar's camp and outside. Within minutes, the whole plain was swarming with them…" Cassandra stopped talking for a minute, and Leliana saw the effort it took her to continue. "They attacked everyone: the Templars, their servants, my men… even the horses were torn to shreds. We were overrun in minutes and we…we ran. I ran until I fell from exhaustion."

"_Things_? Do you mean darkspawn?" Leliana asked. The dark-haired warrior shook her head.

"No. I have fought darkspawn, and the undead, but those were different. They were more metal than flesh, and they had no weapon other than fangs and claws."

Nyx nodded. "She tells the truth, Lel. I can feel them ahead of us. They're… excited. Shit, I was hoping they would let us through…"

"You _know_ these creatures? How?" Cassandra asked, her eyes trained on Nyx with a mixture of wonderment and obvious distrust, as though she only just took notice of the elf's strangeness, of the metallic stare that answered her own.

"It's complicated," Leliana said gently, "but I can tell you this: those creatures are the vanguard of an ancient evil. My friend here is a Grey Warden, and we are trying to stop that evil before it is too late."

"And how does all of this have anything to do with the Reigning Divine?"

Leliana placed a soothing hand on the ailing warrior's wrist, willing her curiosity to abate. She felt no compunction about using her newfound gifts; it all felt as natural as breathing. Cassandra's heartbeat slowed down. Her frown abated, but the questioning look didn't quite leave the dark eyes.

"As I said, it's complicated," Leliana said. "But enough about us, if you please; you still haven't told us why you were watching the Reigning Divine."

"We are… _I_ am an observer. My role is to watch and report Diane's movements to a higher authority. I cannot say more."

"You won't need to," Leliana replied with a gentle smile; the warrior's intonations were genuine, and she had no doubt that Cassandra had been telling the truth. "You are free to leave whenever you feel strong enough; the soldiers will provide you with enough food and drink to reach the next town."

Leliana rose and prepared to leave.

"Wait," Cassandra barked suddenly, "I… have to ask a favor from you, Ser..?"

"Leliana."

"You are going after the Reigning Divine, yes?"

Leliana shrugged. "We are going to the place she seems to be, yes. Whatever may happen if she stands in our way would be… _incidental_."

"_I_ wouldn't mind having a chat with Diane, though," Nyx added somberly, "she and I have unfinished business."

Cassandra seemed to ponder over the information for a minute, then slowly rose from the stretcher. "I would like to join your expedition," she said, "so that I may report on Diane's whereabouts… or final moments," she added with a pointed look at Nyx.

"I think I understand," Leliana said pensively. "But you should know this: our business is critical. We cannot accept any interference, not even from the Chantry."

"_A Chantry spy?"_ Nyx spat the word "Chantry" as though it carried with it a taste of rotten fish. "Haven't we had enough of this?"

"Well, being on friendly terms with the _sane_ part of the Chantry might help in the future," Leliana replied calmly. "We do not want to spend the rest of our lives dodging Templars, do we?"

Nyx pondered the question for a while and then nodded, conceding the point.

"Fine. Have it your way. As for _you_," Nyx added for Cassandra's benefit, "you so much as _sneeze_ the wrong way, you'll be a martyr before you can say _Andrastian kebab_."

"Very tasteful," Cassandra replied with a defiant frown, "Let me thank you for this vote of confidence. Now was there anything else you needed? I need to rest, or so the healer says."

"Yeah, yeah… Just remember," the sorceress quipped as she left the healers' tent with Leliana, earning a mildly exasperated sigh from the bard, "_one sneeze_."

Nyx and Leliana made a stop at the commanders' tent, where they met Zevran and Toast and gave them a quick summary of Cassandra's story.

"You think we can take on those creatures?" the dwarf asked with a concerned frown– or perhaps she was amused: it was hard to say with her.

Nyx waved a hand evasively. "Last time we met one of those, it left us pretty well alone," she said, "but things may have changed. I suspect I have been a big disappointment to my… patron."

"At any rate, they are fierce, fast and dangerous," Leliana confirmed, "and I was thinking… maybe it would be best if you and Zevran stayed away from that fight."

"And miss the big finale? I don't think so," the Antivan said lightly. "Besides, I already killed one of them, remember?"

Leliana winced at the memory of what had happened on top of Fort Drakon. "I hadn't forgotten," she said blankly.

"We'll see when we are there," Nyx said drily.

"Huh. How long before we reach Merry Camp?"

Nyx turned to Toast. The dwarf seemed to envisage the coming confrontation with the same frown she displayed for bedbugs, darkspawn and everything.

"If that Cassandra didn't lie, we should be there tomorrow afternoon."

"Wonderful. Maybe I'll go get drunk."

"I second this motion," Zevran quipped, "also, perhaps an orgy is in order?"

In lieu of orgy, the companions shared a few bottles of wine – Leliana and Zevran declared the beverage excellent, Toast pronounced it to be surfacer piss, and Nyx barely touched the stuff. Despite the drink and Zevran's jokes, it was an oddly cheerless evening: the wind howled through the openings of the pavilion, the reddish sand spiked the wine with bitterness, and everyone's thoughts were as bleak as the scorched land around the camp. After a while, Nyx and Leliana left the pavilion to emerge into raging, howling gloom and an unpleasant surprise: thin, sharp snowflakes that combined with the desert sand to sting eyes and skin. Hurrying through the mostly deserted camp, they rushed into the haven of their pavilion with utter relief.

"Ugh. This is dreadful," Leliana sighed as she unclasped her cape. "And to think some bards sing about the warm, romantic Nevarran nights."

Nyx winked, and a globe of liquid fire whooshed into existence in her outstretched palm, bathing the pavilion's interior in rich orange light. "There you go. Warm _and_ reasonably romantic," she said as two more globes materialized and started orbiting her and Leliana. The bard laughed softly.

"Isn't this a little dangerous, seen how we are standing in a room made of flammable material?"

"You want to be warm, or you want to be safe?"

"I can't have both?" Leliana asked playfully as she undid the practical, if somewhat plain ribbon that held her hair back. Rich, coppery strands cascaded onto the bard's green linen shirt, reflecting the fiery orbs with a blaze of their own. Leliana kept her eyes trained on the sorceress as she undressed, moving with slow, purposeful gestures. Nyx's nose twitched once as the elf took in her scent, eyes half-closed like a cat's.

"Lel, I…" Nyx started, her voice wavering oddly.

"Hush. Don't say it. Whatever it is, don't say it."

* * *

The terror bird scans the underbrush with small, reptilian eyes and snaps its huge beak in irritation. It's a cold day, and the wind carries the smell of snow, an unthinkable event in the great primeval forest. The forest is quiet, for many of its denizens have already migrated towards the coast.

The bird belongs to an ancient species, one that was here even before the arrival of the first shape-shifting monsters who cut through the hills and covered the world with oversized termite mounds. The bird's ancestors have outlived them through speed and cunning, and now that the world is changing again, the bird's offspring will survive the imminent extinction.

The terror bird finds a wild boar's trail; its long, serpentine tongue flickers out of a beak that can effortlessly punch through a bull's head. The tracks are fresh, an hour at most. The bird hisses slightly and picks up pace, moving with a surprising grace for a creature so massive. High in the forest's canopy, cold, calculating eyes follow silently.

Suddenly, a series of supersonic bangs breaks the silence of the primeval forest, and as something crashes to the ground, the terror bird jumps with an almost comical squawk and scampers at high speed, disappearing into the underbrush.

Seventy feet above the ground, Andruil sighs and becomes visible.

"June," she says flatly as the newcomer emerges from the little crater her fall has formed in the damp ground. June, the one the elves name the Goddess of the Craft because of her love of Dwarven machines and automatons, quickly levitates to her level, using the complex enchantments of her armor rather than her own, divine magic.

"June... I thought I had made myself clear. No one is to bother me until my child is born."

Thick lenses focus on Andruil with an infrasonic whirr. Even though June is regarded as the fairest of Elgarn'Nan's brood, no flesh is visible under her current choice of armor-cum-gadgetry, a strategy that has greatly helped keep her brothers at bay. She smells of clean, cool bronze and frozen magic.

"I come bearing news, Queen-sister." June's voice comes out warped and amplified by her helmet; it sounds oddly flat, lacking her distinctive, mischievous tone. "Our King is coming, and He demands His Queen."

For a few seconds, Andruil is speechless, her immortal flesh knotted in more places than she would have thought possible. The little being in her belly reacts to her bewilderment with a terrified mental mewling, and she hurriedly directs soothing thoughts at the unborn child.

"The Lord Fen'Harel has come back from the Beyond? When? How?" _And why send my sister as messenger?_

June hesitates, rocking slightly. There is something oddly graceless about the Goddess of the Craft, as though the joints of her suit constricted her motions.

"Our King is coming," she finally repeats in the same, droning tone. "He demands his Queen, and His Heir."

Andruil snarls, and June bows dutifully, if a little stiffly. Mixed emotions fight for control in the Huntress's heart: hope and elation at her mate's return; deep-seated irritation at being summoned like an elf. It is her duty to answer her king's call, but tradition and instinct require she bears her child alone, hidden in the forest. The godling will be vulnerable until she bestows the divine Essence upon it; the ritual itself is sacred, and a rather intimate gesture... Shaking her head, Andruil decides to compromise.

"Tell my Lord husband that I shall visit Him when His son is born," she finally says.

June stays immobile for a minute, as though pondering the sense of her sister's words.

"Our King is coming…" she starts, but Andruil pays her no more attention than if she were an insect and jumps to the ground below, altering her mass at the last second to land as lightly as a feather. She has already chosen a den, and she has been hunting for weeks, gorging on meat and life-force in preparation for childbirth. That terror bird cannot be very far...

A cocoon of crackling, blue energy materializes around Andruil, immobilizing her in her tracks. For a second, the Goddess of the Hunt is too shocked to even be angry. That, however, is about to change.

"… Demands His Queen…"

"You DARE?"

Andruil's outraged roar shakes the trees from root to top; she obliterates the force field with a pulse of power and dashes towards June at several times the speed of sound. The Goddess of the Craft raises her arms in a pitifully slow movement, summoning shields of magic, but it is too late. Andruil's claws rip through magic and metal like scythes, mauling the lesser goddess and sending her crashing through eighty feet of thick underbrush and solid tree trunks: a solid blow, but as far as the Goddess of the Hunt is concerned, this is little more than a warning pat.

Andruil leaps and lands a short distance from her reeling sister, waiting for the loser to touch her forehead to the ground, signifying her fealty to the pack. Then she freezes, unable to make sense of what her senses tell her.

June's face and abdomen bear deep gashes; the armor's bronze shines brighter where Andruil's razor claws have sliced through her helmet and chestpiece, but there is no blood in the wounds, only a slick, metallic sheen that crawls lazily over exposed muscles and bones. Andruil thinks of the Trespassers and takes one step back as June struggles to her feet.

"Our King is back…" June croaks as she peels off the ruined metal of her helmet, revealing features that are as beautiful and lifeless as Arlathan's statues; but the grin on her lips is sheer madness. A great gust of wind rises, shredding the leaves on the high trees. With it comes a cold that has not been felt in these parts in a hundred thousand years. Raising her eyes, Andruil sees thick, grey clouds swallow the sky.

"No," Andruil growls softly. The gods are eternal and immortal; they can only die if the Essence is ripped from them, and even then, they cannot become… _What? Empty shells, animated by the essence of their enemies? _

"No," Andruil repeats as June takes a step forward, hands open in obscene invitation. She cannot accept the truth, yet the truth is painfully obvious. For if the greatest of the gods has succumbed to the Trespassers, then there is no hope left. For a second the goddess of the Hunt contemplates obeying her Lord's summon; at least she can be with him, to share whatever ironical fate the Ancestors have prepared for them.

As though reading her mind, the godling in her womb kicks and unleashes a barrage of mental screams, awakening a rage that is older than the gods. Andruil's hand shoots back of its own volition, distorting the Veil as she rips out great threads of magic. She hurls the spear of light, and June's grinning shell literally disintegrates under the violence of the blast.

Andruil stands alone before the smoldering crater for a moment. There is still movement among the ashes and billowing smoke; tiny droplets of living metal sing softly as the wind carries them away. Andruil slowly turns away. Whatever happened to her king and husband, she cannot do anything for him now. There will be a time to mourn, maybe a time to die; now the Goddess of the Hunt has other priorities.

She is halfway to her den when the grey snow starts falling.

* * *

Something awoke Leliana.

She lay immobile in the dark for a few seconds, listening intently, but she heard nothing more than Nyx's soft breathing and the sinister song of the wind running among the camp's tents. Yet, something _had_ broken her sleep. Leliana had been on the run for enough years to know to trust her gut feeling.

Gently disentangling herself from the sleeping elf, Leliana got up from their camp mattress and silently passed a cotton tunic over her shoulders, fastening it at the hips with a thin velvet sash. She paused for an instant, then slipped a thin dagger into her tunic, making sure to conceal it in the cloth's folds. Then she stepped outside – the cold instantly made her regret her choice – and examined her surroundings. The snow had abated, and the wind was now reduced to a biting breeze, so that visibility was a little better, and she could make out the outlines of dunes and great boulders past the little forest of the tents and masts of the camping Orlesian battalion.

She thought she caught a glimpse of motion at the far end of the camp, and she headed that way, passing several sleeping sentries to finally kneel at the edge of the desert. There were no footprints in the thin layer of snow that covered the bitter sand, but as she stood up, Leliana caught movement from the corner of her eye, as of a tall, barely glimpsed silhouette disappearing behind nearby boulders.

Leliana hesitated; she didn't like straying too far from Nyx, for fear that the Dread God may attempt to possess her. But the Bond between them had grown powerful; she would feel any changes in the sorceress's mental state, and she knew, deep down, that she was now strong enough to keep the god's influence at bay. Biting her lips, Leliana quickly strode forward, passing like a ghost between heaps of boulders that shone under the cold sky like the discarded skulls of some extinct, giant race.

She found Morrigan sat, cross-legged, in a hollow between the giant stones; the witch was picking pebbles off the sandy ground and sorting them into two clean, little piles. She did not look up when Leliana approached, and she did not interrupt her seemingly childish task when the bard called her name.

"Morrigan?"

_Click, click_, went the pebbles, and as she drew nearer, Leliana saw that they were small, bleached bones, not unlike those little lamb bones that Tevinter sailors loved to toss in tavern games. Leliana watched in fascination as the witch's hands worked, as fast and precise as a spider spinning its web.

The witch sighed and yellow, inhuman eyes met the bard's gaze. "Morrigan is… unavailable, child. What can old Flemeth do for you?"

Leliana crouched at dagger's reach from the witch.

"What are you doing?"

"_Sorting_, child," Flemeth said in a tone that Leliana couldn't quite decide was ironic, sad, or both, "Sorting the vanquished from the victors. Too many fell in this poisoned land, and now their hands are joined forever: the fell and the fair, the pure and the hopelessly tainted."

Flemeth gestured to the small piles of bones, seemingly identical under the night's sickly phosphorescence. "Although who can tell them apart, I wonder. _I _certainly can't," the witch concluded with a chuckle.

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Why, to prove a point, I guess. As for yourself, why did you seek Morrigan, I wonder? Have you come to retrieve your dress –does the Warden's company satisfy you no longer?" The witch said in a dry whisper, fingers trailing on the stained and torn garment she had been wearing since the Deep Roads. For a split second, Leliana had a vision of herself and Nyx embraced while something old, powerful, and _lonely_ watched in dismay. The bard ground her teeth, feeling sick to her stomach, but determined to get the truth out of the crazy hag.

"Why have you been spying on us?"

"As the saying goes: one must keep their friends close... Besides, you are both too important to be left to your own devices. Tell me, _child_, what will Nyx do when she gets to the nexus – the pivot, the place where this cosmic farce begins and ends?"

"I… She… She will find a way to defeat Fen'Harel," Leliana said, her voice ringing pitifully unsure to her own ears.

"I see," Flemeth said with almost palpable scorn, and Leliana had to resist the impulse to draw her dagger and plunge into Morrigan's white throat. "And if she does _not_?"

Leliana shook her head. She must have faith in Nyx, not because Nyx was infallible, but because the alternative was too terrible to even contemplate.

"If she does not, then at least we will have tried," Leliana said sullenly.

Flemeth looked at her for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. "Destiny has a weak spot for the insane, it seems. But perhaps you wouldn't spurn an old woman's assistance, if it could improve your odds in the coming confrontation?"

"That depends. What would you gain from helping us?"

"Very little, as it were," Flemeth whispered, leaning forward so that Leliana could feel the coolness of Morrigan's breath on her face. "An ounce of blood, no more."

"And in return?"

"In return, I can help you unlock the memories contained in Nyx's blood; what you call your visions. You will go to battle fully prepared, knowing what you will face, and you will stand a chance to defeat the Dread Wolf. I warn you, though: this is no merry knowledge."

"What do you need my blood for?"

Flemeth smiled, but did not answer.

Leliana closed her eyes for a minute. Flemeth was mysterious at best; common sense dictated that she could not be trusted. But Leliana had given up on common sense on a sunny Denerim evening, when she had drawn her dagger on Wynne and allowed a possessed mage to become her lover.

Leliana opened her eyes and nodded.

Smiling, Flemeth produced a small glass vial from the folds of Leliana's old dress. Leliana held her hand out, grimacing slightly as the witch made a deep cut across her palm. Seconds later, the cut had healed. Leliana watched the witch pour a single drop of blood onto one of the piles of bones, muttering through her teeth. A pale, grey smoke rose from the bleached bones, and Flemeth motioned for Leliana to lean closer.

The smoke was deadly cold, and when Leliana inhaled it, the world spun and dissolved into oblivion.

Flemeth caught the bard as she fell and gently laid her onto the sand, blue eyes wide open onto the milky night sky.

"It is done," Flemeth said pensively.

"What a pathetic fool." The voice that hissed in the witch's skull was youthful, arrogant, angry.

Flemeth raised an eyebrow in amusement. "For all your scorn, my dear, you can hardly conceal your envy."

"Envy that vapid cow? You must be more senile than I thought, mother. Why would I do such a thing?"

"Because unlike you, daughter, she doesn't regret a thing."

Morrigan clenched her teeth.

* * *

She is back to the time of the gods, this world of ancient forests and immemorial massacres. She is Andruil and Leliana; she sees time as a long, shimmering threads which she can unwind at will; centuries pass in a flash, and seconds last an eternity.

The reign of Elgar'Nan flashes before her eyes. A fierce, mischievous child-god roams the primeval forests; Seconds or millennia later, Leliana briefly spies the first encounter between Andruil and the Wolf God, and marvels at its violence and beauty.

Onward Leliana spins the threads of time, the verses of a lament inscribed in the tiny particles of the divine blood that pumps through her veins. It's an exhilarating race through millennia of struggle and pride, but as she forges on and the War rages, she starts to feel a dull anxiety. Anger and betrayal dash by as Falon'Din's inevitable betrayal unfolds. June, beautiful and cadaverous, smiles briefly, and the pain and exhilaration of childbirth follow.

And then Leliana lets hold of the reins of time, and she sees.

Andruil flies under ashen skies, high above her forests. Mere days have passed since the confrontation with June, but the landscape is hardly recognizable. The millennial trees are dying, choked under a shroud of dirty snow that blows in from Arlathan. Furtive forms move in the shadows below, for whatever has poisoned June is also infecting elves and beasts.

Here and there, Andruil flies past a column of refugees, ragged bands of elven men and women struggling against the cold and encroaching darkness as they flee from the storm that is slowly swallowing their world. To those who will listen, Andruil shouts encouragements, telling them to run to the coast, to the relative shelter of the sea, where Mythal's power holds the raging winds at bay. There, in an undersea sanctuary made of living coral, Fen'Harel's son sleeps with all the indifference of the newborn.

But Andruil will face the storm: it is her duty as a queen, a mother and a lover.

In a vision both familiar and alien, the towers of Arlathan appear on the horizon. The quake that followed Uthenera's demise has considerably altered the city's skyline, but as Andruil draws nearer she realizes that new constructions have been erected: jagged structures that evoke thorny, twisted plants as much as towers. The structures appear made of corrugated iron, dripping with rust, so that the dirty snow around their bases appears streaked with old blood. A high, keening sound emanates from the city, and soon Andruil sees the tiny, abnormal forms that fumble along its snow-encumbered streets, moaning and singing. Roaring in outrage, the goddess swoops down from the sky; her wings slice through the blasphemous throngs like twin blue scythes as she blazes between buildings, leaving in her wake an expanding cloud of vaporized flesh and singing metal.

The great Hall of the gods is no more. In its place, there is literally _nothing_: a dome of solid darkness covers the center of the city. The goddess lands nearby and circles the object; its uniformly black, unreflective surface gives no clue as to its nature, and prodding shots of light and electricity simply disappear through the darkness.

"MY QUEEN."

The voice is but a subsonic growl; it seems to come from far underground, and it carries an odd, inorganic quality, as though produced by some titanic, grinding mechanism rather than a living throat. Andruil does not bow. Instead, she keeps her gaze trained on the wall of darkness; energy crackles along her claws like living fire.

"So it is true: you have come back despite Falon'Din's treachery."

A deep, grinding rumble shakes the ground; Andruil hears the neighboring buildings creak and growl under the onslaught of the Dread Wolf's mirth.

"IN A MATTER OF SPEAKING."

The Dread Wolf's voice is as forceful as ever. It is the voice of one used to command even the gods, and Andruil barely represses the urge to step forward and into the dull obscurity before her. Instead, she slowly steps back, and spears of magic blaze in her hands.

The rumbling laughter rises again, deafening, sapping her will, mocking her weakness. Then the dome of darkness suddenly disappears, like a bubble popping into nothingness, and Andruil has to struggle not to be knocked over by the blast of air that accompanies its disappearance.

Fen'Harel stands close-eyed on the ruins of Elgarn'Nan's throne. He is just as Andruil remembers him: all power and barely restrained anger under a colossal, dark-skinned elf-form. Yet, he is also different, on a fundamental level that Andruil can _feel_, but not quite comprehend. The being that stands before her is infinitely massive, yet feels strangely hollow; his presence sucks the very warmth out of her bones, but when he opens yes of liquid silver and speaks, she can feel her skin roast under the furnace of his breath. Andruil is reminded of the Ancestors' tales of dead stars hunting beyond the night sky.

"What have you done to June?"

Fen'Harel bares sharp, wolf like fangs in a joyless smile.

"June has taken her rightful place in my court. So has Sylaise. Would you like to see them?"

The air above the Dread God's hand shimmers and an image appears, small but very clear: the face and bust of Andruil's second sister, the Goddess of the Hearth, lying pale but peaceful against the gnarled bark of an old tree.

"Sylaise?"

The vision twitches and opens her mouth in silent warning, and Andruil sees that the back of Sylaise's head and neck are fused to the bark of the tree.

Then the image disappears, and Andruil finds herself staring at Fen'Harel's outstretched hand, mere inches from her. The skin is taut over bones that seem too big, too sharp, and as Andruil watches, tiny cracks appear in the fingertips, revealing the glint of burning silver. Before the goddess can overcome her shock, the Dread Wolf's claws have closed around her throat, piercing the skin and lifting her effortlessly. Andruil struggles with all her might, ripping off chunks of flesh from the Dread God's face, and he hurls her away with an impatient growl. Struggling to her feet, Andruil has the time to glimpse a mask of corrugated iron before Fen'Harel's flesh knits back together.

"Ancestors… What did Falon'Din do to you?"

"I am as I always was, my Queen," Fen'Harel says softly, and the goddess recoils from the stench of burning metal and carrion. "Your brother destroyed Uthenera to exile me. He just didn't understand what it was he unleashed into the Beyond: those millions of souls, screaming, rendered mad by fear and bereavement, searching for a way _out_… And I…"

The Dread Wolf's expression grows distant; his shoulders hunch forward as though under a great burden. Now is Andruil's best chance: she must strike him while he is weak, or flee from this frozen corpse of a city.

Yet, she remains still.

"When the dark storm swept over the Trespassers' city, I stood my ground. The host of the dead obliterated _everything_. I fought until I was reduced to nothing but rage, and the knowledge that I had failed you and my son… And so…"

Fen'Harel inhales deeply; his cold, metallic stare meets Andruil's, and she knows that it is too late to run or fight.

"… I did what I was created for. I devoured them: the dead, the Trespassers, the golden forest, everything. They became a part of me, as did their hunger. As _you_ are, my Queen…"

Pain flashes through Andruil's neck. She reaches for the wound; the healed skin is smooth and supple under her fingertips, but Andruil feels a cold spot where Fen'Harel's fingers have pierced it instants earlier. In a panic, the goddess claws at her throat, but even as she does, she feels the cold spread along her bloodstream.

"Do not fight the blood, my love," Fen'Harel says softly. "It only makes things worse."

Andruil falls to her knees; magic crackles around her shifting, undulating body as she struggles to retain control over her form, but it is too late. The goddess's flesh bubbles and melts as great wisps of divine essence leave her, floating briefly through the air to finally be absorbed by Fen'Harel's dark mass. The broken body remains still for a few seconds before the Dread God's essence animates it. As the dead stumbles to its feet, Fen'Harel lets out a roar so loud that the ruins of Arlathan shake and crumble.

"MYTHAL!"

The Dread God seizes the possessed elf's body in a titanic paw, crumbling it like a sheet of paper, and Mythal's mirror grows dark in the depth of her undersea sanctuary.

Andruil and Mythal look at each other in silence. Whatever they do, they must do quickly.

The Dread Wolf is coming.


	36. Chapter 36: Mythal's sanctuary

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Mythal's sanctuary**

* * *

_Sorry for the slow updates, and thanks as always for faves, reviews and simply reading._

_This is one of those "transition" chapters that I'm not so excited about; however I find it hard to lump it with something else... I hope it won't be too boring.  
_

* * *

"_Diane? Where are you?"_

Diane raised her eyes to the dull, grey clouds, but the pale disk of the sun was nowhere to be seen, so that she had no idea of the time of the day. She must have fallen asleep while she and Philippe played on the castle grounds.

"I'm here, Mother."

Diane hurried to rise from the deep, cool grass, and dusted her dress as best she could – the governess, Miss Lanterneau, would no doubt lecture her for hours if she appeared before Mother in soiled straw- sprinkled attire.

"_Diane?"_

Oddly enough, Mother's voice didn't come from the castle; rather, it came from the far end of the garden, a little way behind the well-trimmed labyrinth where she had fallen asleep.

"I'm coming, Mother."

Diane started down the alley, walking at as brisk a pace as her robes allowed. It did no good to keep Mother waiting, as every elf and servant in the Chateau knew well enough. Mother may be a lovely, refined woman, but she had, as she once overheard Miss Lanterneau confide to the master-at-arms, "a bit of a temper."

Diane emerged from the labyrinth and stopped, hesitating. The garden seemed to have shrunk, or maybe the outlying woods had stealthily infringed on the Pelletiers' estate, so that she now stood at the edge of a vast expanse of grey, gnarled trees that rocked gently in the hazy afternoon light. A short distance beyond the edge of the woods, she could faintly make out the shape of the kennels where Father kept his hunting hounds.

"_Diane!"_

Mother's voice echoed from the kennels' direction. Diane wavered at the edge of the woods. She wasn't supposed to venture into the woods; then again, the woods weren't supposed to even be here. This was all wrong, and Diane started praying. The words came hesitantly at first, then faster as the Light Bearer's credo cleared her mind, all but blocking out the bleak sky and the twisted, groping tree limbs.

Mother's laughter boomed through the forest, except that it wasn't Mother's voice at all: the sound was low and rumbling like thunder from a distant storm. Diane prayed faster as the kennels started to swell like a carcass under the sun, the wooden planks of the walls snapping one by one with little dry explosions. Something, dark and very, very _big_, strained to emerge from the rumble; Diane had a brief vision of rusty fangs, of a snout opening onto the Void, and as she uttered the final syllable of the Credo, she snapped free from the Fade. Opening her eyes, Diane found herself staring at a dark, concerned face.

"_Are you all right, Sister?"_

"Yes. It was but a sleepy spell, Brother Umbra."

The Umbra nodded. It had been a little over two days since the Devourer's hordes – the barely living, metal-fanged beasts that were His priests, His vanguards and His victims- had swarmed the Light Bearers' camp, and between their relentless attacks and the dark presence in the Fade, the Reigning Divine's followers were nearly dying from exhaustion. That they could hold on for so long, Diane knew, was a sure sign of the Maker's love and support.

Diane rose from her seat to survey her surroundings. She stood in a vast, circular underground chamber, decorated with vivid bas-reliefs of sharks, whales and unknown marine reptiles. Through the fog of fatigue, Diane vaguely wondered why the forgotten architects of this land-locked sanctuary would elect to decorate their walls with blasted _fish_. Diane banished the idle thought with a frown. She had to remain focused on the situation at hand.

The barricades erected by the Light Bearers to bar the sanctuary's entrance stood fast, for the moment. Diane knew that it was only a matter of time before the Devourer's accursed vanguards clawed through. Even through the barricades and the never-ending, almost subliminal song of the Essence, Diane could hear the creatures' incessant singing and the scraping sound of claws on stone as they shuffled around.

Even so, the creatures' claws and fangs paled before the threat of their Master. Thanks to the spirits grafted to her flesh, Diane felt the damage that the vanguards' presence kept inflicting onto the Veil. The barrier between the worlds was thinning fast, much faster than the Light Bearers' prophets had predicted; soon, it seemed, the Devourer would not need His whelp's body to pass into the lands of the living. It was a terrifying departure from the prophecies, perhaps brought about by the slaying of Urthemiel by the Wolf Born.

Yet, Diane's faith did not falter. She knew, beyond a doubt, that the Wolf Born was coming; the little elven apostate's blood must draw her irresistibly to what waited in these ancient chambers. As soon as the Wolf Born would reach the Essence, the Light Bearers would perform the Ritual, and even the Devourer would be powerless to stop the Maker's Coming.

Looking at her Light Bearers, Diane felt her heart swell with pride and gratitude. Too few of the holy warriors were left, but those that still stood wore their wounds like badges of honor. Together, they had held the very hosts of the Void at bay, and Maker willing, they would live to see His holy reign come to Thedas.

Diane's lips part silently, forming the words of a forgotten language.

"Theros An'eth:

Nal' Lissen Daur Fen'Harel Elvh'Elai Sha'skahel"

_In the Deep it lies,_

_Wrought to destroy Fen'Harel: the Great Weapon of the Gods._

Those were the words of Archon Cestus' prophecy, spoken ages before Andraste brought the Maker's love to Tevinter. Those words had formed the basis for what began as a group of magisters researching the Devourer's lore, and later, through forced conversion and greater illumination, for what would become the Maker's chosen: the Light Bearers, those who would bring about the ultimate battle with Evil and purge all sin from Thedas.

From the corner of her ear, Diane caught a furtive sound coming from the pool in the smaller inner sanctum, beyond the chamber's sculpted walls. The Essence was moving subtly, reacting perhaps to the ancient invocation. But then Diane heard a commotion by the sealed entrance; the familiar, unholy pulse of magic filled the air, and she knew what it was that the Essence was reacting to. The remaining Light Bearers clenched their weapons with stiff, weary fingers.

"The time has come," Diane murmured, and the barricade exploded in myriad molten fragments, burning and maiming all who were not quick or fortunate enough to jump out of the way. Coughing amidst an expanding cloud of smoke and dust, Diane saw a dozen armored shapes jump above the smoking rubble, pouring into the chamber and engaging her Light Bearers.

The Wolf Born had come, and she wasn't alone.

* * *

Leliana strode through the ruin of the Templar camp, her eyes barely registering the horrors that had unfolded here. Human remains were strewn all about, along with what was left of horses and whatever animals were unlucky enough to partake of the Templars' demise. Here and there, the horribly deformed carcass of one of the Dread Wolf's servants could be seen, but they were few and far between, a testament to the swiftness and brutality of the attack. In places, so much blood had been spilled that the desert sand had turned to thick mud, now blackened and hardened by the terrible cold that poured down from the livid sky.

The truly horrible thing about this massacre was that Leliana didn't care. Leliana wished she would cry, or be sick, or at least feel _something_ at the sight of the mindless butchery. She did not. Perhaps she had seen too many atrocities during the fall of Denerim, and part of her had died in that desecrated Chantry – or perhaps it was in Orlais, when Marjolaine had thrown her to the dogs. Or perhaps it was all a result of the visions, a homely and terrible price to pay for partaking of the elven gods' power and madness.

Leliana did not care. Ever since she had accepted Flemeth's offer, nothing had truly felt real: neither the corpses, nor the living men and women of the Orlesian army who trod, pale but determined, over the bodies of those they had once set about to slay. Zevran, Toast and Flemeth seemed hardly more than faint shadows projected over the living, moving screen of her conscience. Only Nyx seemed material, her presence terribly solid through the mists of time and distance, although Leliana sometimes wondered if she wasn't simply a slightly altered reflection; a shorter, wilder facet of her own self.

The entrance to the tunnels was fairly hard to miss, surrounded as it was by a mound of shredded bodies. The Warden and her escort paused to light torches; Nyx briefly held Leliana's hand, staring quizzically into the bard's eyes.

"Are you going to be all right?" Nyx asked in a low voice.

There was so much that Leliana could have said; encouragement, promises of undying love. Leliana had once taken pride in her talent with words; once, she had even foolishly penned a few sentences that she would tell her friend, lover and leader before they would ride into battle against the Archdemon's hordes.

_You are my dearest friend and my love; you lit my path through darkness and I will stand with you, to whatever end._

Hollow words; for Nyx _was_ darkness, and the Chantry sister of yore was all but lost. Now Leliana stood at the edge of a precipice, and she was not afraid anymore. If anything, she was at peace.

"Yes," Leliana said at last. "Thank you, my love. For everything."

More surprised than pleased, Nyx raised an eyebrow, but Leliana waved a hand, giving the signal of departure. With nary a whisper, the column of Orlesian men and women started the long, dark descent down what appeared to be an interminable ramp.

And all along the descent, Leliana walked through the mist of the visions.

* * *

The ritual starts.

Andruil knows the price. With her King fallen and her domains overran, the goddess will do anything to save her newborn child. As for Mythal, her reasons are mysterious, as usual; but the old Protector has always been fond of the elves, the fish and Thedas's many living beings, and she certainly doesn't wish her legacy to be a dead, frozen wasteland. Or it could be that she has further plans; one never knows with the goddess of magic. Mythal is as changing as the Moon herself; even her husband Elgar'Nan never understood her much.

And so Andruil and Mythal have worked together on a final spell, while the sea froze solid above the Protector's sanctuary and the Dread God through Mythal's wards one after the other, shaking the deeply buried sanctum in his all-consuming wrath.

Out of spider silk and moonbeams, cat's sighs and daydreams, the last goddesses have wrought chains softer than silk yet stronger than steel: a great bond, fit to hold even the Dread Wolf, providing that its anchor be strong enough. To make the Binding eternal, both Mythal and Andruil have expanded a great deal of divine Essence, but another, dearer price shall still be paid; for only the blood of the Sun God may nurture the Binding.

One by one, elves enter the sanctuary: male and female, young hunters and sorcerers, they form a circle around their divinities and wait, heads bent respectfully. A small blade in hand, Mythal swiftly carves runes into the tender skin of their cheeks and brows. The swirls and runes quickly heal, but they remain a reddish black, forming intricate patterns that mark their bearers as the people of the Wolf, priests and guardians.

Nodding sternly, Mythal hands the blade to Andruil. The goddess clenches her teeth and takes the enchanted blade to the infant in her lap, retracing the same swirling patterns that her mother traced on the elves. Without a word, Andruil hands the bawling babe to one of the newly consecrated priests, a young hunter who fought for the honor to be one of the gods' last servants. Mythal steps forward to address the congregated elves, laying out her commands in a clear, booming voice.

"Loyal servants of the gods, most renowned hunters and sorcerers, hear the will of Mythal Protector of the People, and of Andruil, Queen of the gods. Today, the Covenant between the elves and gods is broken and forged anew. The People are now free of our guidance, and deprived of our protection; but for your own sake, and for the sake of what used to be, you must keep the seed of the Sun God alive and hidden amidst your own children. The child is one of us, but he will not bear the Essence: let him live and propagate and die as one of your own, and let his brood celebrate the ritual."

Mythal hesitates. It is possible that in the end, the old goddess of magic may feel emotional, but Andruil doubts it. More likely, Mythal is pondering exactly how much of her plans she must hide from the newly appointed priesthood.

"Every few ages," Mythal finally says, "_one_ will be born, in whom the blood of the gods will flow almost pure. You will know him or her as a hero or a monster, a peerless hunter and sorcerer, a creature of raw power and unhindered appetites. Beware of the Wolf Born, for the Dread One will attempt to claim them as His living body, and if He succeeds, all our sacrifices will be for naught. But for every Wolf Born, Mythal's spell will ensnare a Betrothed, whom the Wolf Born will seek, and lust for, and slay, and thus will the Binding be renewed. As for the Wolf Born, he or she should be slain after the sacrifice, out of mercy as much as necessity."

Oblivious to his grandmother's plans, the babe in the hunter's lap gazes calmly at Andruil. The light from the ritual braziers reflects with a silver sheen on clear, green eyes, and Andruil feels her claws extend in involuntary reaction. A minute later, the child is asleep, and Andruil relaxes as Mythal finishes explaining the intricacies of her rituals and spells. The Protector then gently guides the elven priests up a winding flight of stairs to her submerged stables, where trained sharks, their slender bodies harnessed with magic, are waiting to spirit them and Andruil's son away from the besieged sanctuary.

When Mythal steps back into the sanctum, there is a tiny dagger in her hand.

"It it time, daughter," the Protector says, her voice devoid of any hint of fear, anger, or affection.

Nodding curtly, Andruil takes the blade.

* * *

They met the first of the Vanguards about halfway down the ramp.

Incredibly enough, the creatures did not attack: they just crouched motionless, staring at the approaching Orlesian troops and chanting in their sinister, high-pitched voices. Following Nyx's whispered order, the soldiers trod gingerly past small bands of the twisted beings. As they progressed further down the tunnels, though, the vanguards' numbers grew, to the point that Nyx and her escort had to thread their way among them, careful not to touch the still, humming forms. After minutes, everyone in Nyx's entourage was covered in a thin film of sweat, and the descent seemed to last for hours, bringing their nerves close to breaking point.

Bad though the creatures' proximity was for humans and dwarves, it was exponentially worse for Nyx. She could feel the chant wrap around her mind like a cold hand, gently but insistently dragging her down into the murkier parts of her being: the part of her that wouldn't mind giving in to divinity, to the unimaginable power that was rightly hers, that could be hers if she only let the Dread God into this old, tired shell of a world, so that it could be eaten and forged anew… Time and again Nyx teetered on the verge of somnolence, and time and again she reached for Leliana's arm, finding passing comfort in the power that resided in her. Yet Leliana barely acknowledged the sorceress's distress, or even her presence: the bard seemed lost in a dream of her own.

"They're following us."

Zevran's whisper was intended for Nyx alone, but it seemed to cut through the creatures' chant like a thunderclap. Looking above her shoulder, Nyx saw that the Antivan was right: the half-living, metal-clawed beings filled the tunnel about thirty feet behind the soldiers. Their bare feet made almost no noise on the dusty floor, so that their advance seemed as silent and inexorable as a tide of thick oil.

"Yes," Nyx whispered back, "they're drawn here by their master."

"And you wouldn't happen to know why that is, hmm?"

"I have my theories, but I think we'll discover that soon enough."

Zevran shrugged. "Whatever you say, Warden. Just remember that we'll need an exit route later, all right?"

Nyx smirked, but said nothing.

After what seemed like days, Toast, who was leading the way, stopped with a muffled curse.

"We got a problem…"

About thirty feet to the front, the tunnel made a sharp curve and then was blocked by what appeared to be a heap of rocks and debris. As she drew nearer to the obstruction, Nyx saw that the floor before it was splattered with blood and strewn with gory remains, human and otherwise, most of them too badly damaged to be identified.

"Looks like your friends have barricaded themselves in here," Toast said, pointing to the makeshift barricade, "did a pretty decent job of it, too, considering."

"I think I know this place." Leliana's voice sounded dreamy in Nyx's ear, but the interruption seemed to have brought her out of her reverie. Nyx raised a doubtful eyebrow and saw the bard' cheeks turn a light pink, a sight that for some reason caused her stomach to knot painfully.

"I know this place," Leliana repeated with more assurance. "Andruil came here to prepare her last stand. She chose priests among the elves, to raise her son among them…" The bard's eyes widened in shock as the memories resurfaced. "Nyx, I think she and Mythal cast a spell… something about the Wolf Born and the Betrothed being reborn among Fen'Harel's descendants and sacrificed… again and again…"

"Did you see what happened next?" Nyx whispered, her voice hoarse with barely contained anger. This was hardly news; barely the confirmation that her destiny, and Leliana's, had been tampered with by long-dead gods and goddesses. But Nyx would see Thedas ablaze before she submitted to their diktat.

"I… No. Andruil's last moments elude me. Perhaps if you gave me a little time…"

"We _don't_ have time!" Nyx hissed angrily; she had to make a prodigious effort not to seize the bard's shoulders and shake a sense of urgency into her. "What we need is to a way to beat Fen'Harel. What we need… Ah, forget it! I don't have time for this shit."

The sorceress turned to the Orlesian commander, who stood a few paces from the barricade trying not to shake too hard.

"Commander, have your men take cover behind the curve. When I give the signal, charge through the breach. Zev, prepare your little surprise."

Zevran bowed happily, but the commander raised an eyebrow in what constituted a bewildered expression among polite society. "The breach, Milady?" he bleated.

"Yeah, the breach. It's time to play fireworks," Nyx replied with a mischievous smile.

"You know," Toast groaned, "I really wish you wouldn't say that."


	37. Chapter 37: Andruil's last stand

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Andruil's last stand  
**

* * *

_ A quick update for a change. Writing felt good, let's hope for your sake that reading will be OK.  
_

* * *

The last stand of the Light Bearers was nothing short of legendary. Cornered and outnumbered, the mystical warriors fought like enraged dragons, and they were slaughtered to the last man.

In the first instants of the battle, the Light Bearers' advantage seemed overwhelming. Even though the Orlesians outnumbered their opponents one to five at the least, their advantage was all but nixed by the inferno of white light that erupted from their foes' bodies, blinding the eyes and searing the minds. Tumbling blindly, the soldiers fell screaming under the great flaming blades when they were not cut down by their own comrades' haphazard blows.

Nyx and Leliana were protected from the Light, but even with the Dread God's power flowing through her veins, the sorceress had a hard time staying clear of the constant barrage of mystical projectiles that targeted her, and could not bring the full brunt of her power into play.

Leliana phased across the battlefield like Andruil's fury. The air turned red as her daggers slashed through flesh and mail, but she dared not stray too far from Nyx, and her opponents used that weakness to try and corner the pair.

Then two short silhouettes, one lithe and one stocky, started tossing fizzling objects from the relative safety of the entrance tunnel. The projectiles did not explode in spectacular fashion, nor did they paralyze or incapacitate their targets. Rather, they spewed a thick, strangely fragrant white smoke, which quickly spread across the battlefield and coated everything in spectral fog.

It took the Light Bearers a few moments to realize that their own weapon had been turned against them. Not only did their glow make them shining targets, their own Light blinded them as it reverberated on the white fog. Now, it was the holy warriors' turn to fumble blindly as the Orlesians regrouped and cut them to pieces. Those who survived the initial shock resigned themselves to rein in the Light, and the real battle began.

Later, Zevran would sometimes reflect on this battle as a fitting metaphor for the cruelty of human wars; well, he would mainly do so when he was a little drunk.

The fight, at any rate, was as blind as it was vicious. Combatants fell upon each other like enraged animals, tearing at each other with daggers and, more often than not, their bare hands. Nyx's blood magic slithered in the dark, an unseen and redoubtable menace; here and there one could hear the faint echo of an eerie music as Leliana brought swift death to hapless men and women.

It ended in a great gust of wind, a blinding flash of light that blazed even through the now dissipating smoke. Moments later the clamor subsided; heavy silence fell, broken only by the moans of the wounded and the ragged breath of the survivors.

Deep within the thinning smog a small orb of mage-fire materialized, illuminating Nyx's pale features and dark locks. Something lay prostrate at her feet: a figure clad in brown robes, the cloth richly embroidered but now torn and bloodied. The priest shook fiercely, as though in fever or great pain, but she raised her head as Leliana stepped by the sorceress's side. Rodent-like eyes examined the pair, and Diane smiled defiantly through split lips.

"You cannot control me, demon," Diane croaked.

Nyx shrugged. "Apparently no, I can't. But I can _hurt_ you, and that's the next best thing," she said coldly, and her fingers twitched imperceptibly. Diane gasped as the muscles in her fingers and forearms contracted, turning her hands into deformed claws and threatening to rip the flesh from the bones.

"Don't," Leliana said quietly, resting her hand over Nyx's shoulder. The sorceress looked at her with a perplexed frown.

"She deserves this, Lel. And more. Shit, she's responsible for more deaths than the Blight!"

"Yes, she is. And she will face justice. But this is not about her, my love."

_This is about you. This is about what you are becoming._

The unspoken thought sifted through the Bond. Nyx held the bard's stare for long seconds, then slowly nodded. Mercy was as alien to Nyx's nature as it was to the ancient beings in Leliana's visions… But perhaps the bard was right; perhaps Nyx was as much a slave to that savage nature as she had been a slave to the Circle.

The thought brought the first throb of a headache. As the adrenaline of the fight wore off, Nyx became more aware of the Vanguards' chant beyond the walls of the crypt. The melody was becoming more pervasive; it tugged at her mind like a hungry child's hand.

"One would think that you, of all people, would not trust the justice of men…" Nyx groaned, but she left the sentence unachieved. _Yeah, remind her of the torture. Way to go, Nyx. Sodding Maker, if __only __I could think clearly…_ Sighing, Nyx turned her attention back to her fallen enemy.

"My companion here doesn't want me to rip you apart, and I may follow her advice… or _not_. So, why don't you tell me what your plans for me were?"

Diane merely glared. Nyx turned to Leliana with at an expression that said "See, I told you," but Morrigan's voice cut short the retort she was preparing.

"My, Warden. It seems your impending divinity has dulled your wit."

Flemeth stood cross-armed by the ruined barricade – Nyx couldn't remember her taking part in the battle. She suspected the ancient eschewed such things altogether, preferring, in unsettling manner, to watch and then take advantage of the victors. In that sense, the crow feathers in her attire suited her perfectly.

Diane saw Flemeth, too, and the fallen Divine's eyes widened in shock. Nyx wondered if the spirit grafted to Diane's body granted her some form of mind-sight, allowing her to catch a glimpse of Flemeth's true nature. Whatever Diane saw, she didn't like it one bit, and she tried to crawl away on her broken leg when Flemeth drew nearer.

"Still, you have a point. Our saintly friend here owes you an explanation. Diane, why don't you tell the Warden about the Great Weapon of the elven gods, the one that will bring about the salvation of Thedas?"

Diane gasped and stopped her efforts to get away, staring agape at the unholy thing that strolled to her position, then gently knelt by her side. When the witch's fingers grazed her cheek, Diane let out a whimper of fright.

"_Theros An'eth Nal' Lissen Daur Fen'Harel Elvh'Elai Sha'skahel…"_ Flemeth's voice was soft and filled with a sort of regret, but Nyx felt Leliana flinch, and the bard's face became deathly pale.

"Do you know these words, Diane? More importantly, do you know their meaning?"

Slowly, as though in great pain, Diane nodded. Flemeth rose to her feet and laughed; a few among the surviving soldiers pressed their hands to their ears, for the raucous sound was as joyless as it was insane.

"_Deep under it lies. It was wrought to destroy Fen'Harel: the Great Weapon of the Gods." _Flemeth intoned mockingly. "Thus spoke an elven prisoner to Archon Cestus, who was to become the first prophet of what became known as the Light Bearers. _Thus_ was revealed to humans the existence of a weapon so great, it could be used to defeat Fen'Harel… and incidentally, to subjugate all of Thedas, uniting it under the banner of Andraste. Oh, the irony!"

An undecipherable expression etched on Morrigan's beautiful features, Flemeth turned to Leliana.

"Would you enlighten us, child, as to the meaning of that sentence?"

Nyx felt Leliana's fear radiate through the Bond, but the bard took a deep breath and answered. "I… believe the meaning is: _In the Deep, He lies. He was wrought to destroy: Fen'Harel, the great weapon of the gods,"_ she said in a blank voice.

"Precisely, child," Flemeth said softly, before she turned to Diane again. "You see, _Light Bearer_, everything… all your Order's plans to appropriate the Wolf Born's blood and take control of the weapon of the gods… were based on a somewhat comical lack of understanding of old Elven grammar. Or perhaps…" Flemeth smiled brightly and cocked her head as in sudden revelation, "perhaps it was all a deception, a comedy written by some shadowy being, with your unwilling participation…"

Diane said nothing. Old habits die hard, and she clung to her faith like a drowning sailor to the wreck of his ship.

"_He_ is here?" Nyx's voice was but a low growl. "You brought us here… to _Him_?"

The sorceress took a step towards Flemeth and the light of the torches seemed to dim, taking on a grayish tinge. Flemeth stiffened and stood her ground, seemingly oblivious to the tsunami of power that swelled across the Veil and that was about to flatten her like an insect.

"I led you to the only place where you may have a chance to cheat destiny, Warden, even though the odds are rigged against you. Do go ahead; slay old Flemeth if you wish. We both know the music."

"She's right," Leliana said soflty.

Leliana had drifted off to the far end of the crypt, where an arched door opened onto a smaller, adjacent room. The bard's eyes were distant, and Nyx's throat closed at the sadness she felt through the Bond.

"It's here," Leliana whispered as she stepped into the shadows beyond the door. "It's here that it all ended."

* * *

Andruil waits in the darkening sanctuary. Mythal is gone; the ancient goddess has expended most of her Essence to weave the spells that will ensnare the Dread Wolf. Perhaps Mythal will endure, a husk of her former glory haunting the company of mortals; perhaps she will fade away entirely. Andruil knows not, and she cares not. Mythal's sacrifice will not be in vain. The world will endure. The Dread One's ice will melt away, and life will thrive again. The elves will rebuild their civilization as best they can, and hidden in their multitude, the gods' bloodline will live on.

As for Andruil, she is already dead inside.

The last wards are sundered, and Andruil feels his approach through the tunnels. She hears the screams as the last of Mythal's servants, those loyal enough to stay, are massacred and their souls cast into the Void.

He enters the sanctuary, his presence both glacial and scorching, for he leeches the very warmth of the world to sustain the inferno within him. Yet as he lowers his gaze of molten silver on her, she sees traces of his former glory in the ruined, alien frame: the nobility in the shaggy mane, the strength of the great, rotting muscles, the pride that still outshines the glow of burning metal. Andruil is unarmed, her body clad in only the lightest of mage-threads, but she faces the Dread Wolf with a defiant snarl. He stops hesitant at the entrance of the crypt, his mass filling the tunnel behind. The titanic snout rocks nervously from left to right, taking in her scent, and he growls softly.

"WHERE IS THE CHILD?"

The thunder of Fen'Harel's voice almost throws Andruil off her feet, for the loss of so much Essence has left her much weakened, almost mortal. It is all she can do to stand and face him.

"Your son is safe," she says calmly.

"BRING HIM."

"No."

"NO?"

This time the Dread Wolf's roar sends Andruil tumbling to the ground.

"SO WEAK," Fen'Harel rumbles in mirth, "WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR STRENGTH, MY QUEEN?"

Andruil jumps to her feet, only to be thrown down by yet another rumbling growl. She struggles to her feet, again and again. She knows the game. Like her, Fen'Harel is a predator, and he enjoys toying with his prey. If he gets caught in the fever of the hunt, then maybe he will step into the noose. But after a while, the rumbling and the onslaught stop. Panting, Andruil looks up into smoldering metal.

"Is this all you can do, my Lord? I am not impressed."

The Dread Maw opens slightly, exhaling foul, sweltering fumes. Andruil feels her skin blister in the heat; her body heals the burns instantly.

"I grow tired of this, daughter of Elgar'Nan," the Dread Wolf growls in a slightly less thundering voice. "Do you think your tricks subtle? I can _smell_ Mythal's doing here; like cat-piss and musty magic. Come out, Huntress: become part of me. Together we will feast upon the World-Wyrm, and then we shall hunt down the very stars."

"Do you fear Mythal's magic, My Lord?

The rumbling laugh booms through the crypt like an earthquake, and Andruil has to claw the floor to avoid being swept away. She is weakening faster than she expected; soon she won't even be able to stand.

"Fear? No. No magic may hurt me. I was merely hoping you would join me willingly. You are, after all, my beloved Queen," Fen'Harel says in a mockery of her former lover's voice, and Andruil can see, more than ever, how deep the _change_ is. What stands before her is beyond redemption.

"Then come and earn your queen, _jackal_."

In the fraction of a second before he leaps, Andruil worries that the Dread Wolf will not take the bait. Then the great paws hit her with the strength of a mountain collapsing.

The Binding starts.

Pinned down and broken, the Goddess of the Hunt watches great threads of darkness materialize; within moments Fen'Harel is wreathed in strands of exotic matter and mystical energy. The Dread God doesn't struggle; instead, he watches in apparent amusement, his formidable maw cocked slightly to the side as the threads interlock in complicated patterns. The fetters of magic affix themselves to the Essence in his body, then anchor themselves to the surrounding layers of rock and soil, forming a complex spider web in four dimensions.

The Dread Wolf is unimpressed; there is no stone in this world that can resist his strength. Growling softly, he turns his attention back to his prey. Andruil struggles feebly as the Dread Maw moves closer, but the Wolf's paws pin her arms to the ground, and she is too weak to push him away. Living metal trickles from the corrugated fangs onto the goddess's face. Andruil feels the droplets of metal burrow into her skin; the corrupted Essence spreads along her veins like wildfire, and she knows that there is no time left for goodbyes.

The dagger is one of Mythal's most diabolical contraptions. It is designed to embed a heart-seeking, explosive shard in its victim's flesh; but the truly devious part is that the shard only detonates at the stabber's command, making it more of a psychological weapon. The explosion would hardly tickle a goddess, of course; unless said goddess had expended most of her Essence and lost the will to live.

Snarling fiercely, Andruil activates the enchantment.

In the harrowing seconds before her consciousness is thrown into the Beyond, Andruil feels Mythal's great spell react to her death, just as it was meant to do. The four-dimensional grids of power suddenly reorient, trapping her in a steel grip, and she has the time to see the formidable beast above her start in alarm; iron muscles flex as the Dread Wolf attempts to leap out of reach.

Too late. Andruil's death sunders the Veil; what remains of her – what the elves call a soul, maybe, although she has no idea if such a thing exists for the gods - blazes into the Beyond, hardly slowed down by the massive, raging being that is chained to her. As in a dream, she sees the Dread Wolf's body shudder and collapse in a dead heap. Within minutes, flesh and bones will melt away as the Essence, deprived of the god's life-force, devours the carcass.

Andruil knows that the Dread Wolf will never accept his fate, for even death and corruption have not tarnished his pride. He rages and strains against his fetters, turning vast swathes of the Beyond into dead nightmare. Seated, still and cold as stone in the heart of the Grey Forest, chained by the very Bond that seals the Dread Wolf, Andruil endures.

An eternity passes. There are no seasons in the Grey Forest, that vast expanse of mindscape shaped by the Dread Wolf's emptiness. The only sign of the passage of time is the cycle of lust and murder ordered by Mythal. The life-blood of Andruil's descendants nurture the Binding, and their souls appease the Dread God's hunger, and for a few centuries he lies tamed at his former Queen's feet, until the rage and hunger grow strong again. The cycle will go on forever.

There is no such thing as forever.

The Grey Forest may be still, but the mortal world changes. Arlathan is rebuilt and thrives, only to fall under the might of a new Empire, and the once-proud elves are reduced to slavery. For a few centuries, the Wolf Cult endures in secret, but even its priests are not safe from the pernicious influence that is at work.

For even as he slumbers, the Dread Wolf learns to shape the dreams of mortals. Luring a few Tevinters is easy, and thus are the Light Bearers and their precursors born. But Fen'Harel's real goal is more subtle. Andruil watches powerless as his influence spreads among their descendants. Love, lust and the occasional rape become his instruments as he seeks to breed the perfect pawn: one whose rebellious spirit will foil even Mythal's great spell. At first, it seems as though it were all in vain: the cycle repeats itself as the Wolf Born give in to their murderous nature.

Then something happens. From the deep recesses of the earth, a new darkness rises, carried on the wings of the Old Wyrms. The Dread God cares little for the archdemons or the darkspawn, for they bleed and can be consumed. But when the Grey Wardens arise, the Trickster perks his ears up. For Mythal's spell was not meant to ensnare darkspawn. In the taint, Fen'Harel sees his salvation.

It takes centuries of trial and error, but the Dread God is patient. When his perfect pawn undergoes the Joining, the Grey Forest shakes under Fen'Harel's triumphant roar.

Through Andruil's eyes, Leliana watches Nyx struggle against her curse; she sees herself, Leliana, the Betrothed, caught in the invisible net of Mythal's spell. She watches as Nyx's refusal to let her die undoes the spell and feeds Urthemiel's soul to Fen'Harel, greatly accelerating his ascent. All Andruil can do is watch and infuse the Betrothed with part of her knowledge.

Crying freely, Leliana stares at the figure that sits at the heart of the Grey Forest, so grey and shriveled that she could be one of the dead trees. Only the eyes appear alive in the shrunken face, but those eyes shine with the same irresistible willpower as they did when Andruil walked the earth.

The eyes implore, and Leliana slowly nods.


	38. Chapter 38: A blade in the dark

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**A blade in the dark**

* * *

"Lel! Where are you going? Wait!"

The bard disappeared in the shadows past the arched door. Nyx turned to Flemeth with a menacing snarl.

"I'm not done with you, witch, but this will have to wait. You're coming with me. Everyone else, just stay here and make sure the… things… don't sneak up on us."

Zevran seemed about to say something, but a withering glance from the sorceress dissuaded him. Sighing, he unsheathed a short dagger and ostentatiously started to sharpen it.

Nyx hurried after Leliana, silently cursing the shortness of her elven legs. Even as she passed under the door, she became aware of a strong current of magic, a distortion of sorts in the fabric of space. When she glanced above her shoulder, the light of her escort's torches seemed very far away, and she wondered if going back was going to be a problem.

_Let's just hope we live to find out. _

Nyx's mage-fire didn't illuminate very far in this disconcerting environment, so that she felt that she was running blindly in the dark: into a pit full of stakes, for example, or one of those mechanical blades dear to Kolgrim's cultists. It would be quite silly, she thought with a dark smirk, to end up skewered by some musty trap when she counted gods among her enemies. The thought didn't slow her down.

In lieu of pits and elf-chopping blades, Nyx suddenly stumbled into a blinding sphere of light and stopped abruptly, shading her eyes with her hand. The singing of magic was overpowering; she didn't need to scan the place with her mind-eye to know that she stood in a place charged with mind-boggling power. After a few seconds, Nyx's sight accustomed to the light, and she saw that she stood at the edge of a large hemispherical room. Cold silver light danced along the engraved walls, emanating from what appeared to be a pool in the middle of the room.

Leliana stood by the shining pool, her gaze lost in its contents. Nyx hurried by her side. Flemeth, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey bard. You got me worried for a while. Why did you… What's wrong?" Nyx asked anxiously. The bard's cheeks were streaked with tears.

"They are here…" Leliana said softly.

Following Leliana's gaze, Nyx saw nothing but the radiant pool; she tentatively opened her mind's eye to investigate the iridescent liquid… and took a step back, reeling from the sensory onslaught.

"Andraste's ass…"

The pool was alive. It was beyond description, its liquid substance composed of billions of singing particles, each one of which held more power than a fully staffed Circle. The beauty of it brought tears to Nyx's eyes; yet it was also _wrong_, in a fundamental way that froze the very marrow of her bones. And above all, it reminded her of…

"Fen'Harel's Essence," she whispered in disbelief.

"Not just _him_. June, Elgar'Nan, Sylaise, all those he killed. Andruil, too. And… those other things'," Leliana replied dreamily.

Nyx nodded.

"Yeah. It's… alien. And incredibly powerful. I wonder…" Bending forward, Nyx extended a careful hand above the surface of the pool. The Essence swelled in response, almost licking her foot, and she hastily stepped back. For some reason, the otherworldly liquid scared her as much as it fascinated her.

"Ugh, this thing likes me," Nyx hissed softly.

"It _recognizes_ you. You are one of Fen'Harel's blood, after all." Even though she had obviously been crying moments before, the bard's tone was calm, almost detached. No emotion filtered through the blood bond. Nyx eyed Leliana curiously as she drew close; cool fingers brushed a strand of black hair from her brow. The gesture was familiar, reassuring, and Nyx relaxed a little, even though the proximity of the Essence made her jittery.

"Now what," she started, but the bard's lips pressed against hers, muffling her voice. It was a long, passionate kiss, and Nyx felt her worries abate as they shared sensations through the Bond.

"I love you," Leliana whispered when their lips parted. "I love you so."

"And I love you, too, my bard," Nyx said warmly. "We really should do this more often… Come, we need to see if we can use that… stuff… to our advantage."

She turned to the radiant pool; Leliana's fingers clung to her arm for a second, then let go. The Essence sang in welcome as Nyx crouched by the pool.

The little wheels in the sorceress's mind spun furiously as she examined the alien substance. It was no coincidence that Flemeth had brought her here; no coincidence that the Essence reacted to her presence. Nyx tentatively extended her hand above the metallic surface, sending a tendril of consciousness down into the liquid. She felt the Essence react enthusiastically, a warm, pleasant feeling, like meeting an old friend on a sunny day.

"This is weird," Nyx commenced, and then someone pushed her headfirst into the pool. The Essence swelled with terrible speed and pulled her under.

In the first few seconds, Nyx was too stunned to even struggle. Then panic washed over her, and her first conscious thought was, _Leliana you idiot_ _I can't swim I can't fucking swim._ Nyx opened her mouth to scream, coughed, inhaled liquid metal, and all was… just… _fine_.

The Essence's function was not to kill, but to sustain and to mold. Its first action was to trigger a massive release of feel-good hormones, and Nyx giggled in the liquid light. She sent her mind-hands outward, carefully probing the medium where she floated helpless. The tepid, moving substance reacted to her touch, and the melding process started. It didn't hurt; if anything, it was the most intoxicating feeling she had ever experienced. The Essence rushed through every pore of her skin, filling her with power; she had never felt more alive.

Drunk with power, Nyx willed herself to move up, and her head and torso effortlessly broke the surface. The pond was shallow; the liquid only reached up to her navel. She hardly bothered to breathe; she didn't really need to, not while the Essence was feeding and re-sculpting every cell in her body. She noticed that her armor, rings and amulets had been eaten away by the Essence, but her chest and arms were covered in a thin film of living metal. She could see Leliana, standing very pale by the edge of the pool. Nyx wanted to yell at the bard, but Leliana's expression was so forlorn that Nyx just couldn't stay mad. The logical part of her brain informed her that she was drunker than Oghren in a barrel of ale.

"Lel… Hey! I'm here! I'm _fine_!" Nyx waved her hands happily, then frowned. Flemeth's silhouette had just emerged from the shadows of the doorway. Nyx felt a pang of alarm as the witch strode calmly to the edge of the pool, stopping a few paces from Leliana. Cold yellow eyes appraised Nyx, and she instinctively covered her breasts. Even at the height of drunkenness, she had no desire to be seen naked by an ageless abomination.

"I see you made your choice," Flemeth said softly.

"Did I have a choice?" Leliana clenched her fists, but her gaze did not leave Nyx.

"Bad choices are still choices."

"What choice? Can anybody tell me what's going on?" Nyx called from the center of the pool.

Nyx saw Leliana open her mouth to answer; then the bard's eyes widened in shock, and Nyx became aware of an odd, tingling sensation in all of her body. Gazing down, she saw tiny, black bubbles appear on her chest, arms and hands. At first it was only a few black dots, but they spread quickly, and the surface of the pool around Nyx started to turn black.

* * *

Zevran was busy discussing the merits of various steel alloys with Toast – one of few subjects for which the dwarf showed genuine enthusiasm – when the Vanguards attacked.

It was all very sudden. One instant the deformed creatures were nothing more than a distant murmur, a faraway glimmer of metal at the threshold of the crypt. Next, a hurricane of steel-clawed monstrosities stormed through the remnants of the exhausted Orlesian troops, mowing down men and women before they could seize their weapons or mount a proper resistance.

Soon Zevran, Toast and a few survivors found themselves at the center of a tempest of claws and fangs, and entirely too preoccupied with survival to bother with tactical considerations. It was only after the last of the Vanguards stormed through the inner sanctum's gates, leaving a wake of blood and entrails, that Zevran remembered that his primary mission was to keep them out of there.

Uttering a string of particularly foul expletives, the Antivan dashed through the arched tunnel. Seconds later, Toast and the soldiers followed suit.

* * *

"What the..? Aw shit, it _burns_!"

Nyx willed herself to levitate out of the pool, then tried to waddle across, but the Essence would not allow it. With increasing panic, Nyx tried to conjure a force field, then a stream of fire to burn the damned thing away. To no avail; her magic was gone, and the Essence clung to her body, threatening to pull her under. The pain was almost as bad as the flames in the Brecilian forest, and it kept getting worse. Whereas moments earlier, Nyx had felt the Essence nurture every cell in her body, it seemed that the alien substance was now striving to deconstruct her from the inside out.

"Leliana! Flemeth! Get me out of here _now_!"

Leliana hesitated at the edge of the pool, but Flemeth raised a hand in warning. "Do not touch the Essence."

The bard's eyes flashed angrily. She moved, a blur of red hair and dark leather; a fraction of a second later she had Flemeth in an armlock, effortlessly forcing the witch to her knees. Flemeth didn't struggle, but Leliana heard a hissing gasp when she pushed her head down towards the blackening Essence.

"I am going to ask this only once, Flemeth. What is happening to Nyx? Why is the Essence hurting her?"

"The Essence is rejecting her," Flemeth answered flatly. If the abomination in Morrigan's body was scared, she hid it well.

"Why? She is the Wolf-Born. She has divine blood, and Mythal's spell is unraveling. Nyx can control the Essence, can't she?" Leliana was not asking for confirmation; she was stating facts.

"The Blood Bond."

Leliana unhanded Flemeth. The witch hastily retreated a few steps back from the Essence, casting her a venomous glance.

"The Blood Bond," Flemeth repeated ruthlessly. "You may have trumped Mythal's spell, child, but the chains of destiny are not so easily cast aside."

"What are you talking about?" Nyx thought she had spoken defiantly, but her voice sounded more like a plea. Her lips felt brittle, and her lungs felt like they were full of marbles. Flemeth ignored her altogether. The witch spoke to Leliana, punctuating her words with an accusatory finger, and Nyx saw the bard shudder, but she couldn't hear the words through the buzzing of the Essence devouring her eardrums. The crypt was fading to black.

"The Bond is a constant drain on her magic and life-force. Without it, Fen'Harel would have possessed her weeks ago; but it is a two-edged weapon. You have to take a decision _now_, child."

Through the black cobwebs of the Essence eating at her eyes, Nyx saw Leliana reach for her dagger.

Then there was only darkness and blind rage.

* * *

Now was Diane's chance. After the confusion of the attack, the heretics had left after Fen'Harel's creatures, leaving only the wounded, the dead and a handful of healers who were too busy to concern themselves with her.

She crept along the first hundred feet or so – partly to escape detection, and partly because the spirits grafted to her flesh could only heal her so fast. After a while, she started to walk, then to run up the ramp.

Diane didn't make much of the strange witch's "revelations" about the Light Bearer's credo. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that the witch had lied, as was her kind's wont.

Diane didn't have much of an escape plan – that would come later. This whole expedition was a disaster, but there had to be something she could do. Diane was no idiot. She knew that her escape was desperate. It was probably a matter of hours – perhaps minutes- before the Wolf Born were possessed and unleashed the Devourer onto Thedas.

Anything was better than staying in those ancient, musty tunnels with their abhorrent marine bas-relief. Anything was better than surrender. _Anything_…

She didn't hear the footsteps until they were on her, and then it was too late to run. Diane spun around, invoking the Light, and the ancient tunnel was illuminated by a blaze as ardent as the summer sun.

But Diane was no warrior; her talent resided with intrigue, with words that cajoled and poisoned. Her pursuer crashed blindly into her, throwing her down and pinning her chest under the weight of a far more athletic body.

"Stop. the. trick."

The voice was feminine, cold, with undoubtedly Nevarran inflexions, and every word was punctuated by a resounding slap. Diane's vision blurred, and the Light slipped away from her. In the utter darkness that ensued, the voice spoke again.

"Diane Pelletier, you stand accused of the crimes of heresy, illegal use of magic and conspiracy against the Holy Andrastian Chantry. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

Diane was speechless for a second. How could her attacker presume to accuse her of heresy? Surely this was all a bad joke.

"I am your Divine. _I_ decide who is guilty of heresy. If you truly call yourself Andrastian, you will obey my command and let go of me."

The attacker's weight shifted slightly, and Diane heard the faint hiss of a blade being drawn.

"Diane Pelletier, you are hereby excommunicated from the Holy Andrastian Church." Gloved fingers sought Diane's neck, snapping off the gold chain that held her Sun-shaped amulet.

"Are you mad? I _am_ the Chantry! Who the hell do you think you are?"

The voice grew solemn.

"I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of the Chantry. Maker have mercy on your soul."

The blade fell, and darkness reigned supreme.


	39. Chapter 39: Rage

Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf

**Rage**

* * *

_Later…_

* * *

The place smelled of lavender, burnished oak… and _her_.

Nyx stretched lazily. The linen sheets felt fresh against her naked skin, and the scent of Leliana's hair was all over the pillows. She was confronted with one of those difficult moments where you need to pee, but don't really feel like leaving your bed.

Memories of the previous night wafted through her memory, and she grinned brightly, eyes still closed. They had dined on roasted goose and cool tomato soup, accompanied by a light Antivan rose. Then they had retired to the room they openly shared –Antivan inns were definitely more tolerant of elves than their Fereldan and Orlesian counterparts – and lost themselves in each other's company.

Soft singing wafted in from the adjacent bathroom, and Nyx gave out a sort of purr, totally unbecoming of a dreaded sorceress, of course. And there was the _next_ best thing to a night of sex with Leliana: she didn't have to be a dreaded sorceress any more.

Opening her eyes, Nyx extended her left hand, watching the tiny, pinkish fingers wriggle against the dark wooden ceiling. Not a trace of the Dread Wolf's foul magic in there. He was gone from her life, gone for good. Nyx was free.

Soft footsteps and the smell of soap: Leliana stood in the bathroom's door, wrapped in a towel that did little to hide her curves.

"Hey," the bard called.

"Hey."

"Shall I send for more hot water now, or do you plan on staying in bed forever?"

"With or without you?"

Leliana laughed, and Nyx found herself strangely moved by the sound.

"Without, of course. I intend to go shopping. You promised, remember?"

Nyx did her best to look aggrieved. "Ugh. I thought you meant tomorrow?"

"No, it's today. Oh, and I took the liberty to arrange lunch with Zevran."

"Oh, great. He'll be ogling you all the time."

"Nothing wrong with a little ogling, my prudish Fereldan …"

"Humph."

They shared a simple breakfast of cheese and figs in the inn's patio. It was an early spring mid-morning, but the sun was already hotter than a Fereldan summer's noon. The Warden had suffered pretty horrifying sun burns during their trip along the Antivan coast, but her skin was now turning a slightly less pale shade of white – best described as _pinkish_, perhaps. Leliana, by contrast, seemed coated in honey, and Nyx eyed her greedily.

After eating to her heart's content, Leliana went back to their room to fetch her purse. Nyx made a mental note that bards and, generally, ladylike persons never went to the bathroom: they fetched something, or made some other ridiculous excuse. That kind of behavior would have been frowned upon in the Tower, Nyx reflected distractedly; any kind of lie, even the most benign, tended to be viewed as a first step towards the evils of blood magic and demonic butt-orgies.

A cloud passed in front of the sun, and Nyx emerged from her reverie with a little start. How long had the bard been gone? Nyx shot a glance at their room's window, but it was too high, and the inside too dark, for her to see anything inside.

_What if the Crows are after us?_

No, that was preposterous. In the past few months since the Fall of Fen'Harel, Zevran had used Nyx's political connections, as well as Louis's shadier network, to wage a bloody war on the Crow masters. For all intents and purposes, Zevran was now the head of the Antivan Crows, and Zev knew _better_ than to turn upon her.

Nyx threw her napkin onto the table and stood up. It couldn't hurt to check on Leliana, she reasoned; the bard had been through terrible things during their war with the Light Bearers and Fen'Harel, and the events in Mythal's crypt had left her… fragile. Nyx herself had only the faintest recollection of what had happened there, and no wish to dwell on the past.

The staircase was darker than Nyx remembered it; the weather must be turning to rain. The steps were a tad too high for elven legs, and there was a grayish tinge to the wood that she had not noticed before. A cold breeze wafted down the stairs, making her skin crawl.

Nyx hasted down the darkened corridor, kicking up a few dry leaves as she started running. Something was wrong, so wrong, and please let it not be Leliana. The door to their room was locked, and Leliana did not answer her call.

Nyx burst through the door with a flash of fire. Leliana lay on the floor, curled on her side in a fetal position; her face looked very pale but peaceful in the cold light that wafted in from the window. Nyx didn't have to look at the bard's chest to know that her dagger's handle protruded from it like an incongruous growth. Speechless, Nyx watched as Leliana's body cracked, shattered and dissolved into myriad memories.

With an earth-shattering roar, the Being that used to be Nyx closed her fist, crumpling and crushing the inn and the Antivan countryside. Then she turned her attention inwards, into the void that she called self.

* * *

In the center of the Grey Forest, there was a circle of stones, black and foreboding under a thin moon.

Nyx stood in the circle, along with two other beings. This odd trinity shared the same pale elven features, swirling tattoos and straight raven hair, but they were vastly different in their nature.

The first being was bound in chains, for she was insane, immensely strong, and wished nothing but death and the obliteration of all and herself.

The second being had a cold, calculating gaze. She was the mediator of this meeting, and greeted Nyx with a wry nod.

"I suppose you require an explanation…" the cold being started, seconds before Nyx caught her by the collar – they all wore her beloved, weathered Dalish leathers – and slammed her headfirst onto the ground. Nyx finished the job with a stream of blue flames, incinerating her victim before she had a chance to protest.

"Way to go, sister," the chained one cheered in a low, growling voice, "show the bitch who's boss!"

There was a little "plop", and the cold being reappeared a few feet to the right.

"If you would stop these childish displays, we could…" This time it was a magnified version of a spirit spell that cut the being's sentence short, lifted her lithe body and crushed it into a compact ball of gore, no bigger than a melon.

"…We could talk." the being's voice continued unperturbedly from the spot where she had materialized once more, looking none the worse for wear.

Discouraged, Nyx sat on the ground. Her hand shook a little as she picked up a handful of dust.

"Thank you. Now for the introductions: I am Reason, and the crazy bitch over there is Rage. You made us… or more appropriately, you split from us… when you decided to recreate your lost love."

Nyx nodded wearily. The dust in her hand was very fine, and strewn with sparkly bits: it felt terribly real. The dust flowed like water from her fingers, and she picked another handful of it. When her palm was nearly empty, she did it again, and again. She let the memories flow back in on the same rhythm. Nice and easy. That crap was _painful_.

"Your attempts… All seven hundred and forty-six of them… have so far been unsuccessful. The subject…"

Nyx's fingers twitched at hearing Reason call Leliana "the subject". Minutes before, she had held the bard in her arms; she had _known_, beyond a doubt, that Leliana was alive and that she was hers. But Reason was right, of course. Reason was… Reason, after all. _Heh. Funny_. Maybe Nyx ought to give the twins a little sister called Madness. The kid could totter around haphazardly; for play, she could kick the divine carcasses that lay rotting in the dark corners of her domains.

For Nyx remembered…

* * *

_Nyx feels a sudden rush of power rush through her body, as though a dam had been broken. Pain stops as the Essence resumes its workings, remodeling her flesh and soul into something… different. Something greater. _

_She laughs in delight as she opens clear metal eyes, but her laughter turns into a whimper when she sees Leliana. The bard lies on her side by the pool; dark rivulets mingle with the Essence, forming strange arabesques of red on silver. The face looks peaceful, but the blue eyes are empty; what lies there, curled in a fetal position, is but a corpse. Leliana's heart has stopped beating._

_Nyx feels something snap inside her; for a terrible second, she wants to unleash the tremendous power she feels burning her veins, to scorch and obliterate the crypt, its contents and everything beyond its walls. __But then __she fully realizes the enormity of what the bard has done__, and terror adds a darker sheen to the fires of her rage. _

_For there is no peaceful eternity for the Betrothed, no gentle drifting away from Thedas and towards and hypothetical Maker. There is, and there can only be, the Dark Maw…_

_From deep places in Nyx's soul, something stirs and screams. Conscious thought recedes, giving free rein to Rage. In the darkened crypt, Flemeth takes a step back as the newly born Being, ablaze with the Void's very fires, absorbs the last remnants of the Essence; consuming, for good measure, the Vanguards that pour into the crypt in a vain bid to stop It. Then, with a savage roar, the Being is gone._

* * *

"… The subject was reconstructed based on your memories and the fragments of her life-force that you retrieved from after you defeated Fen'Harel."

Fen'Harel… _That_ memory hit like a freighter train, and Nyx retched, spilling bile onto the ground.

* * *

_She blazes into the Beyond, passing through the Veil like a scythe through cobwebs. _

_He rises to meet her: darkness beyond darkness, mountain-crushing mass, fangs of steel, bones of iron, and a rage that mirrors hers. She meets him headlong, flame against darkness. Countless dreamers across Thedas go insane as the war of the gods shakes the fabric of reality. _

_The battle is as short as it is furious. For all his might, Fen'Harel is but the ghost of his former self, a disincarnated spirit raging in the Fade. The Being Nyx has become tears the Dread Wolf's limbs from his powerful chest, rips the skin from the flesh and the muscles from the iron bones and the bones from the soul, searching, searching for Leliana, and when she rips Fen'Harel's soul apart and gets to the core of his being, to the very Void, she devours _that_, too. _

_Leliana's soul is nowhere to be found. _

_There is nothing left of the bard._

_Nothing._

* * *

"Sodding Maker…"

Reason needed not answer this; tears were not her province. The mental construct braced for the annoying display of bitching and moaning that would inevitably follow Nyx's realization that Leliana was lost for good. _Woe, woe, why me; divinity is so overrated, blah, blah, blah…_ Next, the grieving immortal would ponder giving in to Rage; she would threaten to rise from the Fade like a black tide, to hunt down and devour the hypothetical Maker Himself.

_Empty words._ In the end, Nyx would choose the easy way out: she would drown her guilt and her sorrow in a mock reality for the seven hundred and forty-seventh time. Reason suppressed a yawn.

"How _long_?"

"In the mortal realm: seven years, four months, and thirteen days."

Nyx stared at the sand in her palm; the sand glowed red, melted into a small puddle, then solidified again. Rising to her feet, she threw the chink of glass into the darkness beyond the stone circle.

"This is hopeless, isn't it?"

"The chances of re-creating a human soul from scratch are nil," Reason confirmed none too diplomatically. "I suppose you wish to try again anyway?"

"_No." _

Nyx sighed and raised a thin hand. Reason said nothing; she and Rage had just been summoned back into the demigod's mind.

"It's time to settle an old score," Nyx said somberly, and the Grey Forest hummed in agreement.

* * *

_A.N.: Well that was a short one - my "final chapter" had become so bloated that I had to chop it into more manageable chunks. The ending should be here in 2 chap, yay!_


	40. Chapter 40: Old foes

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Old foes**

* * *

The visitor was waiting in the hut, booted feet comfortably propped up on the writing desk, incidentally ruining the manuscript Flemeth had been working on. The witch was pleasantly surprised that her visitor chose to appear as her plain old self; one could have expected such an entity to assume a much more beautiful or more terrible appearance, or both. Even the shadow that the visitor projected onto the Veil was muted, hardly enough to make a Templar's nose tingle.

"Warden. I have been expecting you."

"I doubt that. And it's _Goddess_ to you, Flemeth." Almond-shaped green eyes studied the witch, skimming over the armor and horn-like hairdo with undisguised curiosity. "Nice body. What have you done with Morrigan? Used her up already?"

"My little hemlock flower..? I let her go, for a time. Waste not, want not, as they say: I got this perfectly serviceable new shell, courtesy of a young mage in Kirkwall. And you know my Morrigan: she will only become more_ fitting_ with time, such a hard working girl she is…"

"You didn't ask why I was here," the being in the form of an elf said with a pleasant smile.

"Oh, but I can guess. You are here to wreak your vengeance upon old Flemeth: to gnaw the flesh off her bones, and to cast her soul into seven hells of your creation… Such are the ways of your kind, dear. But would that satisfy you, I wonder? Will it bring you solace, or will it only pour salt onto your wounds?"

The elf's eyes narrowed dangerously, but Flemeth kept on talking; her voice grew low and dry, evoking the rattling of bones in a forlorn grave.

"You are blessed with more power than you ever dreamed of, but it does little to appease you, doesn't it? You cannot forgive yourself for Leliana's death. She gave her life, her very soul for you, _Warden_, and you will never feel worthy of her sacrifice..."

The elf leaned over the table; all pretence of benignity gone, she glared at Flemeth with blistering hatred. The walls of the hut became blurry as another landscape started to appear, superimposed onto reality; a very old, desolate place, littered with the twitching carcasses of gods and demons.

"You had no part in Leliana's death, I am sure," Nyx whispered coldly. "You didn't know what would happen if I stepped into that crypt. You didn't goad us, step by step, making sure that we would serve our purpose like good little pawns."

The outlines of the wizened trees became clearer. Once she was cast into this desolation, even the entity known as Flemeth would be lost beyond all hope. No human host, no amulet, no secret den in the Fade would save her.

Faced with annihilation, Flemeth laughed.

For a second or two, Nyx's expression betrayed only utter confusion, and then she jumped to her feet, growling like an angry animal, ready to expedite the ancient witch, new body and all, into the undying wasteland known as the Grey Forest.

"She's _alive_, Warden."

The ghostly trees flickered and disappeared, replaced with mold-streaked cob walls. Flemeth laughed heartily; it was only so often, after all, that she got to mock a demigod.

"Do forgive me, Warden, but your expression is priceless... But tell me, how does it feel? All those years, spent wallowing in self-pity while your loved one still _lived_?"

Nyx's form blurred slightly as she projected her consciousness beyond the walls of the hut, sending mental tendrils across Thedas. The confusion, the excitement, the hope that dawned on her face moments later would have melted a hangman's heart. But Flemeth was no mortal executioner; the Witch of the Wilds was old, and wise, and she had been spinning this particular web for quite some time. Now was the time for the _coup de grace, _the last gambit that would rid her of the elven gods' interference. Smiling, the witch pulled a small vial from a leather pouch. Bright red liquid splashed inside.

"I preserved Leliana's essence using a phylactery. 'Tis an old elven spell that you may be familiar with… her heart stopped beating for less than a minute, not long enough for her brain to die."

For a fraction of a second, Nyx's features shifted, revealing a flash of steel fangs and eyes like molten metal. Then she relaxed, and the vision was gone. Nyx nodded slowly, an almost admiring look in her green eyes.

"A bargaining chip..."

"Precisely."

Flemeth lifted the vial; Nyx followed the movement like a wolf watches a prancing fawn. "Your human lover is alive, but _incomplete_; part of her is still bound to this vial. That is why she hasn't dream-walked near your domains in the Fade, where you would have felt her presence."

Nyx crossed her arms in a deliberately slow gesture. "I could take it from your dead fingers. In fact, I will enjoy that."

"Could you?" Flemeth glanced at the vial, and an ugly brown stain appeared behind the glass.

"NO!" Nyx's bellow shattered every vial, bottle and glass in the hut, save the one Flemeth held. The witch smiled, and the vial's contents turned back to a healthy crimson.

"Let us skip pleasantries, then," Flemeth said calmly. "I have something you greatly desire; in return, you must grant me a favor, _goddess_, if you please."

Nyx said nothing; she seemed torn between anger and the urge to laugh at the absurdity of her situation. Flemeth waited patiently, silently gauging the all-too human flaws in the demigod. It was difficult not to feel _some_ sympathy; Nyx reminded her of a vastly younger self, and of the choices she might have made. The one now known as Flemeth was _different_, but she was intimately familiar with the emotions that fought for control over the demigod: anger, injured pride, power lust, but also crippling loneliness and regret.

As for the outcome, it made no doubt whatsoever.

"Speak, witch," Nyx spat.


	41. Chapter 41: The last page

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**The last page**

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_Almost there! This should indeed have been the last page(s) of the tale, but I couldn't resist the lure of adding a short epilogue, coming very soon, so bear with me__, gentle reader._**  
**

* * *

'Sister Nightingale' took a bite of her apple. The fruit was sweet, if a little floury; she munched it slowly as she watched the dock workers charge provisions onto her ship. The Eastern sky was just starting to turn white – it would be a good two hours before the Seekers' ship sailed away – but she didn't require much sleep and was eager to part with her bedbug-ridden lodgings.

All around her, the docks of Kirkwall hummed like a great beehive – a hive in which bees had traded their dapper striped aprons for dull ill-washed clothes, and elbowed each other mercilessly on their way to work. Here and there, the blackened shells of burnt-down buildings bore testimony to the madness that had swept the city a few months earlier, but by and large the war had moved on to other territories and life was back to normal for the port's denizens.

Leliana's gazed drifted from the docks to the harbor. The faraway cliffs were lost in mist and the fumes from the foundries, mere shadows of grey over grey water, but the dark shape of the Gallows stood out, terribly solid over the shifting mists, a testament to Tevinter's love story with architectural monstrosities.

The sight made her shiver. It was here that the war had started, in a bitter conflict between an increasingly unbalanced Knight-Commander and a deeply corrupt Circle. The fortress was now abandoned; Leliana doubted if it would ever be inhabited again. It was haunted by more than the memories of injustice. It was here that the Champion, as Hawke was now known throughout Thedas, had made his desperate stand against Meredith and won, sending all Circles across the land into rebellion. Leliana wasn't sure she approved of all of the man's choices, but she could certainly understand them.

_Who are you kidding? Nyx would have burned that place down and pissed on the ashes. And you would have followed her. _

Leliana glanced in the direction of the ruined cathedral, but Lowtown's walls blocked her sight. It had been months since Leliana's investigations had revealed the abuses that were committed in the Kirkwall Circle, just as they had uncovered an equally violent uprising amongst the local mages. The city had been a compendium of everything dysfunctional in Andrastian society, and, as Leliana had correctly perceived, a potential hotbed of civil war. Her advice to the Divine, as consigned in her report, had been to depose the local Knight-Commander and reorganize the Circle, bringing in senior enchanters from more peaceful horizons. It was a sensible recommendation, but it had come too late to prevent the bloodshed. Now she was trying to deal with the aftermath, and things looked didn't look good.

Leliana started humming a tune. Music and the sound of the waves usually soothed her nerves.

The past seven years had been hard on the bard. Following Nyx's disappearance and her own unexpected survival, Leliana had gone through a deep crisis, refusing to talk or take any food for days, until an exasperated Zevran pointed out that he could finish the job for her if needed. The elf's words somewhat jolted her out of her apathy, and she accepted the Empress's demand that she took part in the negotiations between Orlais and the newly elected Divine. As it turned out, her role was largely ceremonial, a lip service paid to the Warden's legend.

The following months had passed like a slow-motion nightmare. Leliana had told no one of what had happened in Mythal's sanctuary; the official version of events was that the Warden had sacrificed herself to end Diane's heresy. On the day Celene and Justinia inaugurated a memorial consecrating Nyx as a martyr of the Chantry, Leliana and Zevran got royally plastered.

Sometimes Leliana wished the others were right; she wished Nyx were dead, so that she may have a body to mourn and a tomb to cry on. But it was not so. Somehow, Leliana knew that Nyx must be alive, and her silence was all the more baffling. Leliana did not dream – her brush with death seemed to have wiped out her ability to do so – but her imagination was as vivid as ever, and she came to imagine that she may have condemned her Warden to a fate worse than death. Images of Nyx standing alone, grey and withered in the Grey Forest started to haunt her days, and she sought to drown them in cheap wine.

Salvation, or at least relief, came from surprising quarters. One day, Leliana found Cassandra at her door. The Seeker had come with an offer that Leliana simply couldn't refuse: _Revenge. _Diane and her most prominent supporters may be dead, but the Light Bearers' influence still permeated the clergy at every level. The new Divine needed all the help she could get to uproot their cancer once and for all, and Leliana was uniquely qualified to help.

Leliana had accepted the offer, and during the following years, she worked relentlessly to purge Thedas of the last of Diane's cronies. Most of the time her missions only involved the gathering of information; occasionally things went as far as organizing "accidents" on the Seekers' orders - she even did a couple of jobs with Zevran. Leliana was not surprised at how easily she had slipped back into her old ways: whether she donned clerical robes or a courtesan's dress, she knew that she would always be a bard. She did her job well, and she thoroughly enjoyed it.

Slowly, Leliana's focus had moved away from revenge. As she rose through the ranks of the Seekers, she began to see Justinia's moderate agenda as a noble cause, one she could dedicated her life to.

The cynic in Leliana suspected that she just enjoyed going with the flow. Leliana, seductress and deceiver extraordinaire, desperately needed someone else to give direction to her life. She relished approval from those she admired, be it Lady Cecile, Louis, Marjolaine, or the Chantry. All moral considerations came second to this urge to please those she looked up to. Even with the Warden… _No, not Nyx…_ Nyx had been different, hadn't she? She had proved, time and again, that she was ready to put her own life on the line for Leliana.

_Yet she left you__, with only memories and the darkspawn taint festering in your veins_. Not unlike the Maker abandoning mankind, really; only this feels more personal, doesn't it?

The thought was painful, even after all this time. Leliana forced herself to scan the crowds, observing the press of dock workers, sailors and the seedier characters that cruised among them like sharks in a school of smaller fish: pickpockets, touts, slavers and bona fide pirates.

Leliana remarked the elf immediately: she stood out in the crowd like a daisy in a puddle of filth, a thin, delicate thing that had no place in Kirkwall's morning smog. Leliana remembered her. The elf's name was Merrill, she had been one of the Champion's close friends, and as such, had been identified by the local Templars as a potential troublemaker. Leliana's opinion was more nuanced. Hawke and his crew had been helpful in uncovering a minor conspiracy, and the Champion himself had not struck her as a raving extremist.

Still it couldn't hurt to interrogate the elf; gently, if possible.

Maker, but that girl looked _terrible_. Leliana remembered a fragile-looking, but happy enough elf. Merrill's pale skin, large green eyes and physical awkwardness had brought out painful memories in Leliana, even though the resemblance with Nyx stopped right there. But then, few people alive were as blunt and forceful as the Warden.

The Merrill that timidly greeted Leliana was gaunt. Her ashen skin and sunken eyes told of sleepless nights and gnawing grief, and there were silver threads in her hair. Leliana knew that some kind of disaster had befallen the elf's clan, although the dwarf Varric had been vague as to the exact circumstances. But Leliana was a keen observer of human nature, and if ever mortal had been wrecked by guilt, it was Merrill.

"Serah Leliana?" The elf sounded almost apologetic.

Leliana smiled reassuringly. She traveled under a different name, but if any spies were about, they probably would know more than her _nom de guerre_.

"Yes. And I remember you: you are Merrill, yes? The Champion's friend."

Merrill's eyes were rimmed with red and shone with fever, but she managed to blush.

"I… Yes, I… Hawke and I…" Merrill seemed about to choke in embarrassment, took a long breath, and finally gathered the strength to finish her sentence "… were friends."

"Well, Merrill, what can I do for you?"

Leliana waited patiently for the blundering elf to resume talking, but Merril said nothing. Instead, she fumbled into her pockets for a long time, pulled out what seemed to be a bundle of dirty rags. She placed it in Leliana's hand and waited, head cocked sparrow-like, as though she were about to take flight at the slightest alert.

"What is this?" Leliana asked, resisting the urge to drop the greasy parcel. When the elf didn't answer, Leliana carefully undid the rags to examine their contents. A sliver of black glass no bigger than her thumb fell into her palm. There was a certain aura about the shard; it was heavier than ordinary glass, and it seemed to absorb more light than it ought to – projecting strange shadows across her palm. Fragments of a half-forgotten dream drifted through her mind: black ice, breaking under Nyx's foot. Leliana shivered and looked away.

"It's a fragment," the elf stuttered. "I… I broke the mirror, because it had brought the Clan only bad luck… And the Keeper… Oh, Creators…" Merrill seemed to realize that she made no sense, and she made a visible effort to wrestle control over her emotions.

"I'm sorry, I am rambling. This… is part of what used to be an Eluvian, an heirloom of my people. I broke it for… personal reasons, and I threw the pieces into a furnace, but this one must have slipped into my purse, because I only found it yesterday, when she started calling…" The elf's voice wavered, and she seemed about to break into tears.

"_She? _Who calls you?" Leliana shifted her weight imperceptibly, altering her stance so that she could quickly bring her daggers into play if the need arose. There were reports of abominations roaming the streets of Kirkwall, and a grief-addled young Dalish may hide something more lethal.

Merril took a deep breath and spoke again; the voice was calm, but her eyes shone with an almost fanatical light.

"The Fiery One. She calls through the Eluvian. She wants you to have this, and she has a message for you…"

Merrill closed her eyes; her head tilted back, and for a second it seemed like she was going to fall backwards and crack her head on the pavement. Leliana instinctively reached out for the elf, even though her training and common sense screamed that it was a mistake.

And a mistake it was: Merrill's thin hands snapped forward, catching Leliana's arms in a vice-like grip, pulling her down so close to the elf's face that Leliana could smell her breath, cool, fragrant and so reminiscent of the _lost one's_. From the corner of her eye, Leliana saw the crowd slow down and freeze, men and women stuck mid-motion like absurdly realistic statues.

Merrill opened her eyes, and Leliana's gaze was sucked into twin pits of molten silver, smoldering, yet cold as a winter moon, terrible yet strangely familiar.

"_It has been a while, my bard."_

The voice spoke through Merrill's lips, but the intonations were undeniably _other_, down to the pretense of irony that tried, and failed, to mask deeper emotions. There was no point in asking _who_ the being was that so unceremoniously possessed the young Dalish: Leliana could feel Nyx's presence, feel it physically, as though a long-lost limb had been miraculously re-attached. Tears welled up in Leliana's eyes. It would have been nice to greet Nyx with loving words, but all that came out was an accusation in the form of a question.

"Why, Nyx? Why have you been silent for all these years?"

"What did you expect?" The blazing pits burned brighter, as though the fires of an old anger were rekindled. "You killed yourself, Leliana. You sodding killed yourself to make me… Whatever I am now… What was I supposed to do? Check on your ashes every few months to see if you got better?"

Leliana ground her teeth to stave off tears, but it was a losing match. "I am sorry, Nyx. You know it was the only way."

"Ah yes, we had to save the world, didn't we? I came _this_ close to scorching Thedas, I was so mad at your stupid idea. Fen'Harel's reign would have been merciful compared with what I was tempted to do."

"But you didn't."

The blaze in the elf's eyes abated a little. "No, I didn't. Instead I tried to bring you back; to piece you back together from memories. I couldn't. You died so many times…" Nyx's voice trailed off, and she was quiet for a moment, perhaps lost in painful memories. Leliana took the possessed elf's hand between hers, carefully, almost timidly, as though any brisk gesture may break the spell.

"You have found me now, haven't you? We can be together now."

"It's not that simple, my love." Merrill's features were nearly expressionless, but the bitterness in the sorceress's voice sent a shiver down Leliana's spine. "Flemeth played us, Lel. In order to... _find_ you, I had to seal away my essence - my true body - beyond the Fade, in a place I do not fully comprehend. It has taken me months to find this host through the Eluvian fragment. Even so, there is too little divine blood in her; I cannot linger."

"Then I will go to you," Leliana said firmly. "I am not afraid of crossing into the Fade, my Warden. A life without you is all I fear."

"NO."

Nyx's voice rolled thunder-like over the frozen harbor. Fire blazed in Merrill's eye sockets, almost blinding, and for the first time Leliana caught a hint of the changes that had intervened in her longtime companion and lover: a flash of otherworldly hunger, quickly subdued and replaced by a kind of shame.

"No, my love," Nyx repeated gently, and she reached for Leliana's cheek: a familiar touch, even though the fingers were not hers. "I will not let you do this again. I want you to live, Lel. Remember how we said we would roam the world together until we got sick of adventures? Well, I need you to do that for me now. Live! Fight in glorious battles and live up to your legend; or don't, retire to a nice cozy place and enjoy peaceful days. Heck, love another, if you must."

"But…" Leliana made a mental review of all "buts". But I want to be with you _now_. But I am tired of this war, tired of being used by such and such faction to further their political agenda. But we have never asked for any of this; but we _deserve_ a happily ever after. So many "buts", and yet none of them would change the facts: life was about dealing with the here and now, life was short and _precious_. As though reading her mind, Nyx nodded.

"Twenty years are nothing compared with eternity, my bard. Better to be a living slave than Empress of all the dead; but when your time has come, you can be my Queen… If you will still have me."

Nyx did not say what would happen if she did not, but Leliana had seen it in her visions: _rage, hunger, and the rise of an Arlathan of steel_.

"I will." If Leliana had ever been certain of anything, it was those two little words. "I will." She could have repeated this for the next twenty years, providing she was given enough breath. "Of course I will, _idiote_," she said hoarsely, pulling the elf to her, closing her eyes as she pressed her lips against Merrill's, picturing Nyx as she had been on their last night together: taller, stronger, more muscular, power literally coursing along her veins. Nyx responded hungrily, and for a long moment the illusion was perfect. Then Nyx gently pulled away.

"Maker, I have missed this... But I have to go."

"Will I meet you in my dreams?" It was a silly thing to ask, but it was something to cling to; an excuse to delay the inevitable.

The elf sighed and shook her head. The fire in her eyes was quickly ebbing away. "Not the way you're thinking, no. My domains are sealed, and you are no mage. But I left you a little something." Nyx pointed at the Eluvian fragment, still clutched in Leliana's palm. "It won't protect you, and it won't grant you any magic. It's just crammed full of my memories, so you won't forget me, _literally_," the elf added with a mischievous blink, and Leliana had to smile in spite of the lump in her throat.

"You are many things, my mage, but _easily forgotten_ isn't one of them," Leliana whispered as the docks crowd resumed its incessant milling. The uncanny glow disappeared from the elf's eyes, and she started like one who has suddenly awoken in unfamiliar surroundings.

"Oh… Oh, I'm sorry, have I been bothering you?" Merrill stammered, "I must have been daydreaming and I…I hope I didn't say anything silly."

"Don't worry," Leliana said kindly, "you did fine."

There must have been something in her tone – either that, or Merrill remembered more from her possession episode than she cared to admit. At any rate, the elf blushed furiously, then muttered an apology as she turned away, tripped on her own foot, caught her balance in extremis and was gone, disappearing in the crowd like a crumpled flower carried away by sewage. Leliana briefly pondered going after her and decided against it. The Champion was gone; interrogating Merrill would be unnecessarily cruel.

Sighing, Leliana raised her gaze towards the faraway slopes of Sundermount Mountain. It was a rare, red dawn. The sky was ablaze with the Maker's light, and the jagged peaks were silhouetted in black, a stark reminder of the grand scale of nature. Yet even the mountain was not eternal; just like the sea over Mythal's sanctuary had given way to silent plains, Sundermount would crumble under the relentless tides of time.

_Twenty years are nothing compared with eternity._

It would be a while before the Seekers' ship sailed for Orlais. Humming softly, Leliana rummaged through her bags, smiling when her fingers found her quills and paper. She laid the manuscript on her knees, using her prayer book as a pulpit, careful not to let the wind scatter the pages.

_Here be fragments of the tale of Nyx, Sorceress, Hero of Ferelden, Pawn of Destiny… _Leliana smirked at the somewhat grandiloquent preface; she would probably have to revise it at some point. Slowly, affectionately, Leliana turned the pages, until she reached the white space at the end. The manuscript had been waiting for seven long years.

Leliana carefully dipped her quill in ink.

The Warden's tale had come to an end.


	42. Epilogue

**Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf**

**Epilogue **

* * *

_Well here we are, at the end of a long ride. I hope it's been enjoyable for you. For me it has been a lot of fun. Maybe even enlightening - Ah, the benefits of proper planning over blithely plowing ahead…_

_Thanks to all readers - Uber thanks to all reviewers, for your kind support as well as helpful remarks._

* * *

The spirit was lost.

Being thrust into the Fade should have felt like homecoming. The spirit was born – if such an approximation may apply to the likes of him - in these realms, and he had once happily wandered its everlasting mists in search of mortal souls to comfort. Those had been fulfilling days: he had purpose then, just as he had purpose when he first was cast into in the mortal realms.

But things were different now. The spirit's sense of self had been shattered when he had merged with his human host. The spirit knew what he used to be: a function, a concept given substance. He had done his best to stay true to his purpose, but the results had been less than stellar.

He had once been called Justice; what he was now was more… nebulous, and an object of great anguish.

By and large, the Fade was a much more subdued place than he remembered it; the Great Wolf's incursion had taken a terrible toll on spirits and demons. More were being born from the eternal womb of lyrium: neonates with no sense of purpose, floating wisp-like through the eternal mists. It didn't make much difference to Justice: whether they were survivors or newly hatched wisps, the denizens of those ever-changing realms felt the change in him, and all were quick to move out of the way.

No, this was no homecoming… There was no peace to be found in the Fade. There were still Templars alive. The thought of those monsters going about their daily lives, controlling, bullying, eating, breathing, living, was _unbearable_.

But now his host was dead, killed by the hand of his best friend. Justice knew that it was only fair to free the tormented mage… But allowing his body to die had been a mistake. As much as Anders 's constant whining and struggling had irked Justice, the apostate had been a useful tool, a potent weapon against the injustice that run rampant in Thedas. Now Justice bitterly regretted showing him mercy; for he was stuck in the Fade without a chance of fulfilling his purpose. The inaction gnawed at him like a cancer.

_Vengeance…_

The mind-voice was low, and filled with a promise, a dark energy that resonated deep within the one that once called himself Justice. The Voice had called to him as soon as he had entered the Fade, and for what felt an eternity, Justice had been searching for its origin. Any lesser being would have been discouraged by the veils of shadows and the powerful wards that hid the Voice's lair, but Justice was as single-minded as he was powerful, and now his long search was drawing to an end.

With an impatient groan, Justice wormed his way past the last wards and into the Voice's strange domains. The Fade here was a curious paradox: a place built upon the dead souls of gods, but vibrant with all the colors of life; a frozen sanctuary dedicated to the memory of one that still lived; an expectant corpse, waiting for the anima that would thaw the cold blood in its veins. As far as the eye could see, a great forest lay frozen in the last seconds of a winter dawn, buds and blossoms straining, ready to burst to life at the first touch of spring.

_Hurry, Vengeance. I need you…_

Rebirth, hope and yearning meant nothing to Justice, and he coldly trampled the nascent vegetation and the pale blossoms of hope as he trudged deeper into the Grey Forest. He was aware of the main Power that shaped the Beyond into this mockery of hope; he could feel her presence hovering in the background, as surely as a blindfolded man can feel the heat of the sun. The Being was terrible, but seemed oblivious to his approach; perhaps she was too busy preparing the coming of whomever this shell of dreams was being prepared for.

_Vengeance… Come closer…_

He saw her at last: the Entity behind the Voice.

She appeared small in stature, hardly taller than a human child, with long, flowing black hair that obscured her face. She stood under a cliff of sheer black granite, stern and incongruous against the lush background of blooming vegetation. She was bound to the rock with chains of iron, thick and covered in rust hat evoked crusted blood. And she was _powerful_: not as strong as the Being who had thus chained her, perhaps, but vastly stronger than any spirit or demon Justice had ever come across. He could feel the illusory land strain under her mass.

_Vengeance… Beautiful Vengeance…_

As Justice drew near, the Entity raised her head, revealing pools of molten metal where eyes should be.

"What do you wish of me, creature?" Justice asked defiantly, aware that the very act of speaking with such an entity was a violation of everything he had once stood for. His kind did not compromise, nor did they consort with demons…

The Voice rose again, harsh, angry, imperious, and it was all he could do to hold his ground.

_I am no demon, Vengeance._

Yes, he could see that now. The power that burned in the Entity was untainted by mortals' weaknesses; her anger was as old and pure as lyrium itself.

_I am like you. You and I are everlasting Powers, stripped of our higher purpose; unfairly torn from our very flesh, cast down and chained by the lazy and the selfish. Will we tolerate this injustice?"_

"I am nothing like you," Justice said, but his resolve was fading already, burning away in the fire of his anger and his frustration. For an agonizing instant, he clung to the memory of what he once was; then the memory fizzled and burned, replaced with the leering faces of templars, their armors streaked with the blood of the innocent. Vengeance dropped to his knees, growling like a beast, and the last remnants of self were consumed.

The Entity smiled, pleased at his sacrifice; steel fangs gleamed in the Grey Forest's pale dawn.

"Now, my priest, I shall give you purpose," Rage said softly.

* * *

From her throne at the heart of the Grey Forest, Nyx watched the transfigured spirit blaze through the Veil in search of a mortal host. If she and Reason were right in their assumptions, the newborn abomination's first concern would be to seek out a working Eluvian; or perhaps it would seek and kill Flemeth first.

Either way would suit Nyx just fine.

"I still do not approve of this," Reason said dryly.

Nyx shrugged. Allowing Rage to pursue her own agenda was a risky proposition at best, but the feral construct was the only part of Nyx's personal trinity that retained _some_ ability to interact with the Fade beyond the Grey Forest. And the potential rewards outweighed the risks.

_Better to be a living slave than Empress of all the dead, _she had told Leliana, and she had meant every word of it. But perhaps Nyx didn't have to settle for such a pathetic choice. After all, she _was_ the last of the Elven Gods...

_Fortune willing__, my bard, I may yet offer you the crown of Thedas._

Nyx snapped her fingers, and her left hand was engulfed in blue flames. Skin and flesh crinkled and burned away, revealing charred bones and living, writhing metal. Another snap of the wizened fingers, and the hand was whole again.

"Sometimes," Nyx said with a little smile, "you just have to play with fire."

* * *

**The end**


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